Effortless Swimming

Carl Reader is coming back as our guest in today’s podcast episode. We will talk about case studies of swimmers dealing with body pain and the best way to help them.

01:30 Neck and Shoulder Pain

Carl Reader Coaching

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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.

Hello and welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is a return guest who’s been on a multiple times. Carl Rita, welcome back to the podcast. Hi Brenton, good to be back. So we’ve done quite a few podcasts together and we’ve talked a lot over the last couple of years. Your background’s in, well, sort of functional movement, and you’ve got a functional movement course, which a lot of our swimmers have gone through. And you’ve also worked personally with a lot of the athletes that I coach as well. And you’ve helped them basically become pain free in swimming, in running, and just feel better and move better as well. And it’s a huge component to swimming well is being able to move well. So on today’s podcast, I want to go through, we’re going to go through a couple of case studies of swimmers that you’ve worked with. What were the issues that they’re having? And how did you help them overcome

those issues? Because I mean, the people I talk to at clinics, the people I meet, they’re normally dealing with something, whether it’s shoulders, whether it’s knees or hips or neck, there’s so many things that that can go wrong there, or they can have niggles. So we’ll go into detail with some of those. So Carl, what’s, do you want to start off with maybe the first one that you’ve got there? Yeah, I’ve got, you know, just in general, we see a lot of that shoulder complaints, shoulder and hamstrings and lower back with the with the clients that I’ve been working with. But this is a particular lady she’s 45. She’s been really struggling with the neck and shoulder pain and restrictions. She’s also worked from home behind the computer a lot of the time. And just was just complaining to me how, you know, just doing backstroke and crawls was hurting her shoulders. So we just we basically looked at the first thing we looked

at was just looking at her program that she was doing. And I found this across the board with a lot of the swimmers that a lot of the stretches that they’re doing to try to warm up or even improve mobility, even though they were getting that they were stretching the right muscles, it was compromising other areas of their bodies, particularly their upper back. So like the latch stretches and the common shoulder stretch that you see a lot of swimmers doing when I had to make the modifications that actually made a huge difference. So that was quite interesting working with one and one with the clients, but particularly this plant had a whole stretch regime that she was doing. And I must have cancelled about four or five of them, her stretches and had to replace it with other things. But immediately the next day, she phoned me and we talked and she said, I feel so much better in the pool already, just from leaving out those

stretches. So was she doing them prior to swimming? She was doing them as part of her warm up? Part of the warm up, but also at home, she was doing a lot of stretching at home in the door, trying to stretch out the pecs and the lats and the tightness. So she was trying to like really try to improve her shoulder and neck mobility by doing stretching. And what I said to her was that when we start to move the body correctly and get those core muscles engaged and then you start to move functionally, you’ll see that the neck and the shoulder will start to loosen up as opposed to try to stretch it out. And so that’s obviously she had to first experience that. But after two or three sessions, she said already how she couldn’t believe how her neck and her shoulder was just loosening up from doing squatting exercises or so I have to explain the link between how the hips and the shoulders are linked through the fascial systems and the

muscle systems.

And so she moved from doing a couple of different static stretches to more movement based warm ups and stretching? Correct. She’s a member of your group, your members for swimming and so she’s got access to the videos that we did the course and she was doing them but it was more the stretching that was getting her. So there’s some of the stretches that weren’t in the course that I had to have a look and see just check her technique with.

It’s funny how it’s changed so much. Like I remember as a kid, you know, that’s pull your arm across the body. It’s like that’s the kind of like lazy teenager stretch I think is like when you can’t be bothered doing anything, got to look like you’re doing something so you’ll pull the arm across the chest there. Correct. Look her movements, the stretches she was doing, she was doing the stretches a hundred percent. But what I said to her was when we when this is a big part of another thing across the board with the swimmers that I’ve been working with, is this body awareness like she didn’t actually know what like where she should feel it really or which muscle she should be using and she said, well, I feel my lats stretching and I’ll say to her, how does your neck feel? And she said, actually really sore and she hadn’t she didn’t actually pick up on that that her neck was being compressed while she was stretching the lats.

She just would be focusing on getting the pull and the lats muscles. And I think that was common across so many of the swimmers.

So what was the what was the process that you went through with her to discover what was causing those issues? Well, when you start to do the functional movements, they kind of highlight the problem here is very quickly. So when we were doing sort of like squats and rotational exercises, step ups, functional lunges, I could very quickly see when she was moving where the weaknesses were and the muscle and balances and the symmetries were. Some of the exercises and drills she was doing in the pool as well. I could when she mentioned like she was doing two arms at the same time, like backstroke and also just to do one arm at a time. And that really also made a difference to her. So there was and now she can do it because she’s got the mobility back in a thoracic spine in the Senate, you know, I’ve covered quite a few times. But and then really building that core strength in a functional way

through the squats is one of my favorite ways of doing that. And that that really the squatting just has a huge effect on postural overall postural fixes. It kind of like hits many of the postural weaknesses. And so just by starting the first few days, they’re getting the squat technique right. And then I went into more advanced stuff after that. But I really after two, three sessions, you can in the testimonial that she wrote how she really felt way better after two sessions. And that’s coming from the squats again. And that’s all just working online with people, right? Like you assessing how they’re doing those exercises through like a zoom call or something similar and seeing how they’re moving. Even FaceTime just put an iPhone or whatever on a desk and she just would just go from there. I imagine how you’re sort of looking at how people are moving is how I’m looking at people when they’re swimming. So like you’ve got a finely attuned eye

to, you know, to that particular particular thing. And you can probably see things that most people can’t, which is what I think you have developed over the years of just doing so much analysis in that time is it’s like these, yeah, you can sort of see patterns and things that, yeah, that aren’t moving how they should and compared to how they should be moving. So. Yeah. And just as you say, like you, you, you pick it up pretty quickly. And I think the other thing is just now with the body awareness is such a big thing. Like when I asked my clients or the other guys, you know, what muscles do you feel working when they sort of look at you with a blank stare? Like, what do you mean? And it’s sort of, OK, well, it’s important that you know which muscles you’re trying to try to hit here. And, and, you know, are you aware of the core engaging and are you can you see this and then say no. And I said, well, you know, so it’s that I think that’s been a

big part from the testimonials how helping them improve their body awareness has really helped them in the pool as well.

It’s just a massive one, isn’t it? Like, like proprioception out of the pool, if that’s if it’s poor or body awareness out of the pool is is poor, it’s only going to get worse once you’re in the water when you haven’t got that grounding. So, yeah, so it makes it makes a huge difference. And like I said, with like my kids, they’re fairly young, they’re three and five. I see it when they’re doing like they do Taekwondo and jujitsu and swimming. And it’s like at the start of doing these things that like these arms and legs moving everywhere. And then they start to dial into to where they are in space. And it’s it’s just awesome to sort of to watch that. And I think it’s something that we, you know, we get older, that we got so much stuff in our mind that we just tend to forget about or we sometimes just don’t tune into what we’re doing and and that body awareness. Sometimes we do certainly just, I guess, forget about or not

think about or not even know what we should be doing in in many cases or what we should be feeling. I think that’s the big thing. You know, we’ve never been taught at school like how to move. I’ve spoken about this before, but like we know in old and there’s like you said, you run around the field, touch a toes, do some push ups and a quad stretch and dance advanced to like a hip flexor seems to be the big name today. Everyone’s doing hip flexor stretches and but it’s not really teaching people like, you know, this is how you’re supposed to squat, how you bend, how you rotate, you know, the technique that’s involved in this and it’s highly technical. I mean, you’ve got multiple joints working, especially when it comes to back pain and so and the muscles have highly coordinated functions and not just, you know, they like to do a bicep call or whatever. So it’s it’s it’s when you understand that and you help people actually

grasp it and teach them and take them through that, that the the body just realigns itself. It’s that’s the beauty of the work that I do is it’s not so much relying on call reader. It’s like, and I’m giving them the the movement and the body just sort of does the corrections. It’s it’s fantastic. It’s wonderful to watch. Let’s go into the second one you’ve got there. Sure. I had a guy with really, really chronic hamstring injury and tendinopathy and pain and he just faked his swimming and affected his running. And he was younger, like also like 40 years old and triathletes and he really just reached out to me saying that my hamstrings are killing me and he’s been doing stretches and doing a lot of hamstring workouts, YouTube stuff. And so I was again, once again, he couldn’t even do a squat. He couldn’t squat down even like 10 degrees. He could even do like half a squat problem of pain. And so that was interesting because we had to then look

at what we talk about neural release, neural tension. So we would release the neural tension through very simple movements. And I’m not sure if you’ve seen some Olympic athletes do like vibration exercise or they shake their limbs or they they’re moving fast or they’re doing something to like get the nerves reset. So it’s kind of what I do with the guys as well, like shaking the legs, rolling the ankles, just like kind of like sending pulses through the nervous system to retrain that and reset that and then help to help them even in a chair. And I was quite insane because he’s very strong and fit guy, but I put him in a chair and I taught him I like to get out of a chair property to teach the right mechanics of the pelvis. And he kind of was laughing about this thing, you know, this is an athlete getting out of a chair for like an old guy. But once he got that mechanics at rock and roll, he was he was he just couldn’t believe how that would release

his hamstrings and he could feel his glutes and he’d wrote to me like a day later saying I can’t believe I had to do no hamstring stretches today. After about two weeks, he was squatting down, so when they say 90 degrees, but like at least 45 50 degrees, which is a huge improvement. And I don’t know those who are listening have had hamstring injuries. They know that it’s that it’s a it’s a it’s painful, but it also takes a long time to come right if you don’t address the underlying issues as well. And so we see he was having that initial pain through running was when he was experiencing running and swimming and swimming as well. Yeah, right. Must be on time kicking the kicking feeling on the freestyle and.

Yeah, yeah, interesting. And so.

So instead of hamstring stretches, you did you start him off with squats or did you have him do some other things to, you know, to to then build up to doing squats if it was quite painful for him? Yeah, good. I just just that does it a neural releasing neural tension because of the hamstrings and the retention of the sciatic nerve and the lower back and then just getting in to to learn how to do the squat movement but getting out of a chair. You see when you when you get that rock and roll movement right with the pelvis that releases a lot of the lower back neural tensions in the lower back. That’s we call it a neural plexus is where all the nerves exit the spine. And then that has a huge effect on the on the hamstring flexibility and mobility. So I actually stopped him doing quite a lot of the hamstring stretches in the initial phase was just to re retrain the muscle. So get the glutes firing, get him a better position, release the tension, the

chronic tension in his body. And then he’s swimming as well that just to you know, just to take like not got full pace explosive, just really slowly and feel the body, get connected to your body, that game body, body awareness.

Can you explain that the rock and roll through the hips that you mentioned there? I don’t quite fully understand. Yeah, yeah. So when you when you get out of the chair, you want to you want to like it’s kind of like I’m going to send the video, but you you want to tip you want to lean forward from your hips. You want to feel the pelvis is rocking forward. Like in physiotherapy, we talk about an anterior tilt. So your hands, if you put your hands on your hip bones, you almost you’re leaning forward and rocking forward from the hips, you’re not you’re not doing what many people do sort of bend forward from their back, from their midback, they leave there. So if I do that, I’m leaving my pelvis behind. You got it. You want to lean forward. And that’s the that that action of rocking the pelvis is what what helps runners and the squat technique. It’s that leaning forward movement that we talk about in the course as well. And throughout the centuries,

but definitely decades, there’s been this idea that we’re supposed to whenever we pick up something where we’re not to lean forward, we’re to use our knees and keep our back straight. And then if you’re familiar with that, when you pick up a box, I always told us, use your knees, keep your back straight. And that that’s through the whole of functional movement up the window, because what happens is now, whenever you go to gyms or anywhere in the world, people said, oh, don’t let your knees go too far. Don’t bend your knees too far forward. Don’t go and that’s we trying to come back to what the functional positions are. So that rock and roll actually teaches you it’s it’s it’s the key to unlocking a lot of luck, core strength and mobility in the body.

Yeah, interesting. OK, it’s good. Yeah, good explanation of it and makes a lot of sense, especially when you see it there. And those that are listening on the podcast, this is on YouTube as well. If you’re looking for the video version of it. So if we do one more, so one more athlete that you’ve worked with, what’s another case study that you’ve got? There was a lady in her sixties. She was from the U.S. And she a horse rider and fallen and broken like knees and shoulders. It was like a like a like a really challenging case. But just love swimming. It was her life and she just doing it could help. And she was going through a warm up program before the course that we did. And she just was amazed that said that she never ever moved her body. She just moved the joint. So she was just taxing and grinding her shoulders. And after watching the course and learning how to use the whole body, how that made a big difference. But with her again, I didn’t do

any mobility work with her. I just did core strength, got her strong again. The squatting technique had to be very careful because she had like we talk about calcification and the tendons of in the knee and stuff. So she was a very limited movement, but it was amazing how much strength we could still get. And she swam her fastest time and she was in a competition and she was she just really benefited from just overall strength training. And that was done in a chair, you know, again, just help because she couldn’t do much with weights and heavy weights because of the condition.

That’s what I like a lot about the about the stuff you teach in the course and the way that you teach things is you don’t need a lot of equipment. People don’t need to necessarily change what they’re doing a whole lot as in like they don’t need to go to the gym four times a week. They can probably do this stuff at home. They can work into their current routine. And I think that stuff is why is how people can make changes a lot a lot better. It’s like if I’m prescribing

something for someone to do, it’s like I’m just going to get them to maybe include a couple drills in their warm up. Keep it simple. You’re already probably warming up in the pool anyway. And if we just add a little bit here or replace something a little bit here, do that every session. That’s going to get that result and it means you’re going to stick to it and you’re going to start to change that that habit or change that movement in your case. Yeah. And I say like, you know, the body is designed to move. So it’s just when like anything that’s been designed, if you if you use it correctly, it’s going to work, you know. And so I think that’s at the core of this. They’re one of the members of your members said to me, just it’s just been so good to learn how to move properly. It’s something that, you know, how is moving probably going to help my exercising? But when you realize that exercises are movements and they’re not done correctly, it

just strains the body completely. So especially have injuries. There’s a lot of the members as well, like just helping them with the too much overload, like doing too much. I mean, that’s something you’ve probably seen swimming as well. The guys are doing to maybe overtraining the typical overtraining scenario. So but yeah, it’s just across the board, really, that the three things just to summarize for the listeners was, you know, watching out for existing stretches that you’re doing that may be compromising other parts of the body and then improving your body awareness through understanding and doing things slowly and actually connecting with the body and then the part the powerful effects of of moving properly and a good, good functional techniques. And I want to say this is that there are a lot of functional exercises that you go and download on Google, YouTube that are dysfunctional. And one of those examples is the

lunge. The lunge is a very popular exercise for strengthening glutes and hamstring muscles. But in my opinion, the way it’s taught is very dysfunctional. And you see a lot of people complaining of knee problems and ankle problems and back doing that. But it’s a very common exercise you find in many of the trustees sort of exercise program. So that’s kind of first question asked my my guys and I meet them is, are you doing a lunge? And they say, yes. And then I’m like, OK, before we go any further, let’s like, let’s go and have a look at that. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. And what’s what’s one of those like main things that will be causing issues with the with the lunge like knee issues? The thing is they they the lunge, their body is behind their knees. So when you see someone lunch, they step forward and they think down. So if here’s that if you’re looking here’s the knee and here’s the body, you want the body to be leaning forward.

So you want your head almost in line with your knee when you watch most people lunge their head and body is way behind the knee. That makes sense if you watch it and you see what I’ve just described it. But it’s all about the center of gravity is way too far behind. And that’s and that makes the knee the pivot point and the loading point and overactivates the pod vessels.

Yeah, interesting. It’s it’s it’s funny. Like it seems so to you, it probably seems like it’s it’s really simple. Yes. And it’s really like obvious because you’ve done it for so long. But for you know, but for most of us, it’s like, it’s like, wow, that’s a massive, massive difference. And the story that like that I use here is and I know people are probably sick of me talking about surfing on this podcast. But to me that’s like that’s the thing that I’m trying to master and learn alongside swimming as well. But surf coach that I listen to he’s talking about how like how you can basically turn better. So most people, he said, well, they’ll have their basically bum out. They’ll have their knees forward in there like their arms are sort of moving all over the place and you can’t really twist if you if your bum sticking out. So it’s like, yeah, you got one foot forwards, one foot back, it’s almost like a sprinters pose like you’re

going to start like a hundred meter running sprint. So you sort of bend your crotch down and that way you can really turn your upper body a lot more almost all the way around when you’ve got the right position. And it’s just like and for me that just opened up like opened up surfing for me in a massive way because I could then just like no, I could then just turn so much easier because I learned how to move properly. It’s like that one thing. Wow, makes a massive difference. And so as a surfer as well, that exact position when you talked about the bum out or the sticking out what you do is you you actually lock the rotational centers of your spine because that creates an extension in there and what we call the T12 L1 junction and that’s your that’s where the spine changes its orientation of the joints. So your rotation sits a little bit higher than that like just above that joint. And when you surf and stick out and wave your hands like you

described, you’re actually locking the most rotational part of your body. So now you just have no way to move and do anything. And when you come more upright and relaxed there and you just everything unlocks, I think that’s important. It’s a great point. It’s a system. So like, you know, if someone’s got a really sore shoulder, actually go to the opposite hip and do work. And I just can’t understand like why is this guy giving me a hip exercise in my shoulder? So, you know, like, did he not get the email or like, you know, but it’s it’s a system. It’s a domino effect. It’s a sequencing. So when we’re looking at even a neck neck problems and stuff or wrist problems, we don’t be very often as you talk to physio, it’s the same sort of philosophy. Sort of we’re looking at this chain. But that’s the beauty of functional movements. If I don’t really, if I’m not there in person, or I even I don’t many times, I don’t really fully understand

what’s going on in the body of often I don’t fully understand it. The body’s complicated. And then I don’t think anybody has a true sense. We saw, you know, just the tip of the iceberg. But the beauty of functional movements is that like once you put functional movements back into someone’s life, like the body just does the rest. It’s just sort of it just organises it. And especially fascia is another thing. A lot of people doing fascia stretches with these foam rollers and they’re trying to run their ITB bands or they’re trying to fascia their glutes. If you if you understand that that the fascia is adopts to the messaging from the muscles, then you’ll understand that if you just if you do the other way around. So if you stretch a fascia, you’re sending a signal from an exterior force to the muscle and the muscle gets confused where if you if you train the muscles function then the fascia gets a signal like, okay, now we need to make changes.

So it’s much easier than to learn how to move functioning than to do fascia stretches. It’s also painful. Now they do work fascia stretches, but often they are temporary and it’s very important for listeners that you do there are benefits to doing fascia stretches. But for some people struggling with chronic conditions, they can often it can actually make it worse sometimes. Interesting. And just somewhat related. What’s where does where does sort of like deep tissue massage play a part there? How does that? Because I find like if I get I’d call it like if I get beat up on the massage table, like a really hard massage, yeah, I’ll be sore the next day, but I’m usually like feeling like I move a whole lot better. How does that sort of play into things? Well, remember this, if you talk about asymmetries, you know, like some muscles are chronically tight and others are weak and loose. So it’s just that that’s just releasing that tension

that you that you’re holding in your body. So you are going to feel better just by releasing that. But if it’s if it’s if you’ve got that that muscles tight because it’s trying to stabilize a unstable joints in the back core and your hips, then often that releasing can can cause more pain because, you know, taken away the stability. If it’s just a chronic tightness from a imbalance or bad posture for a while, it actually does. It feels great. You know, and as you say, you still feel really good, but it’s not, you’re not that often doesn’t solve the problem because it’s it’s going to get to why it’s tight in the first place. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean something that if I’ve sat down a lot, if I’ve been like in the car or on a plane, or like coaching clinics and sort of on the iPad might not have the best sort of seat seat there to be doing that for a whole day. That’s normally when I’m like, wow, I just need to I need to go get a massage and just

like it just get loosened up and it’s yeah. And every time that I’ve thought I should get one because I’m really tight and then I haven’t got it. The next like that week of like, I’ve done something where it’s just like a pull to muscle or something is like just listen to that listen to your gut, listen to her intuition. Yeah, and it’s it’s a different integral part of me, like, especially if athletes they know that that that’s a post massage is great. You know, toxins like just getting the blood flow and all that stuff. It’s so yeah, it’s definitely a place for that. And so those are the listening if you do perhaps have some some issues that you want to get taken care of. Kyle, what’s the best place to get in touch with you because you’re in South Africa but you work with obviously athletes from all over the place and what’s the best way for those people to get in touch with you? I think the email address is the best, which is

call wellness at gmail.com and call with a C call wellness at gmail.com and then my website is call reader coaching.com and you can just reach out to me there and I have a discovery call, which is free so people can we can organize a zoom or FaceTime chat just to see if what I’m what I offer is going to work or it’s going to be a good fit. And then we go from there. Yeah, fantastic. We’ll we’ll keep all of that. We’ll put all that in the show notes for those that are that are listening and and that course that we talked about as well, the functional movement for swimming will put in the show notes as well. So, Kyle, I appreciate you jumping on. I love hearing stories and case studies like you’ve you’ve shared today. It’s it’s great to hear that like it when you can when you feel better, when you move better, you haven’t got that pain like life is just so much better for people and that’s that’s something you can really help people with.

So I appreciate you jumping on the podcast and and sharing those stories. No, thanks for having me, Bryn. Always good to check. 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 Swimming (And Moving) Pain Free with Carl Reader appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In today’s episode, I wanted to get Matthew Tones on the podcast to talk about how the 5-day catch challenge and 8-week faster freestyle course helped him get from 2:20 to 1:22 for 100 yards.

00:55 Swimming Background

RECOVERYAIR JETBOOTS Therabody

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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 Matthew Jones from Philadelphia. Matthew, welcome to the podcast. Hi, Brenton. Thanks for having me. You made a comment in the eight week faster freestyle course that we’ve gotten. You mentioned the improvement that you have made in the last year going from 220 for 100 yards swim down to a PB about 122 for 100 yards, a little bit quicker than the way you started. And you said a large part of that was from going through the catch challenge and then the eight week course. So I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk about how you went from 220 down to 122. And yeah, and how that came about. So what’s your what’s your background was swimming or like, why did you start swimming a year ago? My background is no swimming. I grew up in first 15 years. I was in New Zealand and until I was 25, I was in Australia. So I always grew up with like a pool in my backyard and me and my

brother and friends would sort of ride to the river and play in the river. But so I was comfortable with water, but I’d never in my life actually swum lengths in a pool. And so for some reason, I decided I was going to do 70.3 Atlantic City Ironman. And I looked at on the you know, the stats since 1.2 miles, I thought, Hey, I can swim in the pool. I can handle that. And so I just train the bike in the run and then and thinking, I’ll just jump in the pool, you know, maybe a month or so before the event and touch up my swimming. And then this was 2020 COVID struck. And so everything was cancelled. And so I thought, Hey, I’ve got an extra year. I want to do a full Ironman. So come January, I decided it’s twice the distance. I better revisit my ideas about swimming and decided to get in the pool is I live in Philadelphia says January was freezing cold. I had to go to the YMCA. I got in the pool and I could probably barely swim two lengths. And I thought

I’m in a bit of trouble here. So I’ve been organized. There needs to be a warning, like a warning label on Ironman or on triathlon entry forms saying, like, do not start swinging like four weeks out from your race, you might need a little bit more time. Well, yeah, I mean, I’m a member of the local tri club and it’s very social. And now that I’ve been through it, it amazes me how many people share that attitude. Like, I just pick up swimming a little bit here and then I’ll get it done. I think it’s kind of disrespectful to the sport. Pretty widespread. Yeah, you certainly not alone in, you know, in starting starting like that. So you went to the pool, you was struggling to to sort of go further than been too lapsed without feeling tired. What was the what was the process like after that? How often were you going to the pool and what sort of were you following a program or what did that look like? I kind of started out just jumping in the pool, I think

three times a week and just building my stamina, I guess you could say I approached it much like you would say running cycling, we just do more of it, you get better at it, which I later discovered is not the case at all. And I just go there each day and I maybe add an extra length or something like that and keep building, building, building, but I kind of felt like I was hitting a roadblock like my stamina was getting better, but my pace was just going nowhere. And it just wasn’t making any sense to me. So I got a some lessons from from the pool staff and they were not that fantastic. And I just kept on going and then like I chatted to this guy in the pool in the lane next to me and it turned out he was from this club and doing the same event, which was Eagle Man 70.3. And he’s like, Have you heard of this effortless podcast effortless swimming YouTube channel? And I said, I’ll give it a look. And I’m a stay at home dad, I got

lots of time. So I just sort of started devouring your YouTube content and watching videos constantly. And and what pace were you at when you roughly when you had that conversation? Where are you stuck at? I was around, I would say 220. Like, and so so the way that I sort of approach everything is I have a long term target and I have a short term target. And my short term target was two minutes. And I thought, Hey, if I can get to two minutes, I’m getting somewhere. But I just wasn’t getting anywhere. Like, I think I got it down to 210 and the effort to go from 220 to 210 just seemed enormous. And and and so I was look at the videos and I’d see like, you know, I think Sam Long saying, I’m a pretty lousy swimmer, I do one minute 15. And I’m like, Oh, my God, what’s, what’s the difference between between 210 and one minute 15 that I’m not getting and it was just just sort of got incredibly frustrating. And what did you learn from the YouTube videos? What did you

pick up that helped you bring the times times down to like, what was it 140? Where were you one? I’m down to about two minutes. I think you mentioned that. So yeah, what was it that you changed? I think one thing that I picked up was this idea of reaching to start with. So I was very much kind of in the windmill pattern and this mentality that I just spin the arms faster and get the cadence going in your swim more. So you swim faster. But at the same time, I’m even now one of my focuses is efficiency. So because I have to be able to do the Ironman swim, I didn’t want to burn all my energies, turning the arms over. And I think it did naturally get faster with just continually doing it. But I was at this stage, I was probably going to the pool four times a week. And it was just a massive chore. Like, I loved being on the bike and I loved running. But it was like, I hate I was going to the pool at so five in the morning, I hated getting up, I hated going

there, I hated in the pool, I hated the shower after I just hated everything about swimming. And it was just, I just knew it wasn’t right. Something had to change. Did it did you enjoy it any more when you started to make your stroke longer and reach out? Or was it still a bit of a grind?

It was definitely still a grind. And I think the big difference was the certainly the first program I did, which was the the five day faster freestyle is a five day faster freestyle. The other challenge? Yeah. And that was kind of funny, because I think it was I didn’t know it existed, even even though I’d watched a lot of the videos, I didn’t know such a thing was out there. Because I’m the sort of person that I’m I’ll do the work. I have no problems doing the work. But when it came to swimming, I just didn’t know how to do the work. And, and those questions like, hey, you do this set at 60%, do this set at 70%. And I didn’t know what 60% or 70%. Well, I sort of had one speed. And I talked to people and I was like, do I go faster by swinging my arms faster? And, and I couldn’t really get a good answer. And, and so I, I think I was complaining to my wife, like, this is really frustrating, I’m going nowhere, like, I put an hours in the pool, I

better off just putting those hours on the bike and making the time up there. And it was like, some, a lot of people probably know now, Facebook kind of stalks you in five minutes later, this, this freestyle call starts popping up my Facebook ads. And I was like, what’s this? So I’ll give this a try. And immediately, I saw a massive returns because pretty much it was five days and something I think it was two things specific each day to focus on. And pretty much everything to focus on was like the opposite of what I was doing. Everything I was doing was completely wrong. That’s funny. It’s a, it’s a, did you progressively see improvements along the way? Or was it like, or did it stay the same for a while? It was immediate. Like, I think I was hover by this stage, I was hovering around two minutes. And I completed, especially the first, probably three days. I think I knocked 20 seconds off immediately. And like, because

I’m really meticulous with, you know, keeping records and so on. And I saw, well, this is amazing. He’s like, promising five, was it five seconds and five days? And I was going to give feedback. I thought, no one’s going to believe me. And so I was really impressed. And so then kind of knocked that big chunk off. And then as I sort of continued with it, it says five days, but I sort of built those exercises into my routine continually. And then it sort of kept coming down from there. Do you, were you entering too far out? Is that one of the things that you were doing? Yes. Yes. So now that I’ve actually, and I’ve been through the second course, I realized I was kind of treating it like with kit gloves, like, and very delicately, like finding that perfect little spot just to slide my fingers in. And it’s almost like my arm was acroplaning onto the surface. And and then I think the first exercise was use a kickboard

and enter it, you know, hold the kickboard at the front of your tip fingertips and enter behind. And I’m like, this is weird. This is like, probably 15 or 20 centimeters shorter than what I was doing. Yeah. And it was just completely different. Like, I’m quite big. I’ve got like a body for swimming. I’ve been told I’m six foot four. But and so to not reach like that was just took a bit of getting used to. Yeah, it’s a funny one, isn’t it? The feedback that I get from people who go from what we’re reaching to then entering fingers first and then reaching under the water is it it sometimes feels wrong because you’ve got that resistance of the water or that, you know, drag being created as you’re reaching forwards in the water. But it’s, yeah, so it’s kind of counterintuitive, you think, Well, this has got to be slower, because I’m pushing against that water. But you actually, you get much better, like, sort of driving

momentum forwards with that with that better entry as you reach forwards in the water, because otherwise, all of that momentum seems to sort of dissipate when you land on top and you just go downwards. So yeah, it’s a funny one to get used to. But I think it’s good with that kickboard in front because it just forces you you can’t can’t get it wrong with the kickboard. Yeah, yeah. And I think and what sort of what ended up doing was basically reprogramming programming my entire stroke in the five days where I kind of, I guess it went back to the start. But it’s like one step back to take about 10 steps forward. Because then I could start to do my, you know, three or four days a week, but actually have something to work to work on. So for example, my one thing that I really enjoyed was the when you put the hands in, you mentioned the bubbles, get the bubbles off your hands. And so I’d watch these videos from, say, Lionel Sanders, where his

coach is sort of telling me, you got to get the feel for the water. And I could never understand. And apparently this is a common problem, understand what feel for the water meant. And especially as I do this longer, you can kind of see these things happen with with the bubbles. So I can I can kind of sense my hands, if that makes sense, sliding in more now, rather than just reaching out and just hoping I did it right and pulling back. Yeah, it’s so much more enjoyable when you when actually know what you should be be doing in there. It’s like, you know, it’s like getting in the car and then just like having no destination, but you know, you need to drive. All right, it’s just like that’s what it’s like without having any specific things to work on. But as soon as you go through, say, the course of five day catch challenge, it’s like, all right, well, I know I need to get my hand in this way. It’s like, Okay, well, I know that this first

destination I need to get to. And did did you find it more enjoyable with your swimming after knowing what you should be doing there? Did it? Did you start to enjoy going to the pool at all? Yes? Yeah, I started to to go with more of a purpose. So I was following a training plan for the Ironman and it prescribes X number of swimming X number of rides and so on. And I was kind of like, okay, it’s three three one hour swims or I’ve chopped off my three hours week complete. But I started to actually go there and think about like, what am I actually doing in the pool? And, and I guess the other thing that sort of came about from this was, there’s a very good sort of open water coach, John Kenny here, I actually went to meet him. One of the problems I have is that I live in the city in Philadelphia and there’s no pools, you’ve got to drive about 45 minutes or an hour to get to a pool. So I decided to I was really super frustrated. I’m going to go

and see this guy. And one of the piece of advice he gave me was to basically cut my lengths right down. I was doing you know, 800 to 1000 without stopping to build the stamina. He’s like, just just keep it to 100 200 maximum, you know, 300 400. And so I could come back and I would go to the pool with the these the five five day challenge. You know, the activities to do, I’d work them into like a warm up that I do each day. And I could spend 100 yards thinking about, okay, what am I doing with my hand this time? Alright, what am I doing with the pool on this one? And I could isolate it. So it felt like I actually had some sort of structure once I once I shortened my reps and and my swimming really improved that as well. This podcast is also brought to you by TheraBody. Now I’ve been a big fan of TheraBody ever since I started using their products four years ago to help with my recovery after swims. And their latest product is TheraBody’s

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And so before you were just basically going to the pool swimming continuously for the session and that was that was it. Was there? Yes. Yeah. So there’s no intervals. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like, I mean, I was keeping intervals of about a thousand. But like my long swim for the week was basically, oh, how far can I swim in 45 minutes or how far can I swim in an hour? And I look back now and I think it’s so silly, like such a waste of time. No, but nobody was guiding me at the time. Yeah, look, it’s a it’s a it’s a mistake that most people will will do coming into the sport, especially coming from running and riding where it’s like get out there and do 50 K in the bike or something like that or the 10 K run. So yeah, it’s a different approach. And the the barrier that that the people experience there is they go, well, but if I stop, like, isn’t that but then I won’t get as fit. It’s like, well, if you’re not stopping,

if you’re doing a thousand yards before you have any sort of rest, good chance of techniques probably breaking down and you’re going to be swimming worse and trying the wrong things as opposed to, you know, you’ll take 20 seconds rest and your heart rate might come down a little bit. Like that’s not going to be the least of your worries because your technique is going to be much more important. And so I guess on that as well, one metric that I was sort of and I’ve always tracked is my swolfe score

because I’m not so much concerned primarily of how fast I can swim 100, but like I want to swim, you know, a longer distance in the most amount at least amount of time or conserve an energy for a bike and run. So I was concerned for efficiency as well. And once I started to do that, corrected my stroke, my swolfe was coming right down as well. And that’s even now still coming down, which is kind of a more important metric for me than how fast I can swim 100 yards. And so you’re training for a couple of triathlons this season. Do you want to talk about the events that you’re training for? And then perhaps what sort of training you’re doing at the moment for those events? Yep. So I’m doing Eagleman, which is a 70.3. I do that in June. That’s the first major one of the season, I guess. And then I have me and my friend are sort of doing a challenge together where we’re doing a full distance Ironman, Maryland in September.

Then we’re taking a road trip in a week later doing full distance in Chattanooga in Tennessee. So two full Ironmans in a week and a 70.3. Plus I’ve got a few, I’ve got an Olympic and I think five sprints thrown in there as well. Plus I’m a trip to Australia for two months. So I’m kind of busy, but my training is,

because it’s so cold here, I have to go to the YMCA and swim. So I go down there quite early in the morning. I’m sort of playing around with times to try and find when the lane’s the least busy. But it generally tends to be early in the morning. And once the weather finds up,

I tend to ride my bike. So I build the swim into my bike ride. I’ll ride for an hour out to this creek. It’s called a creek, but it’s actually a river, I think. And they do open water and swimming out there. And I’ll probably swim for an hour out there and then ride home again. I’ll do that probably once a week during the season. And then my trip to Australia, my parents actually stay on the Gold Coast. And I’ve been told there’s this brand spanking new like aquatic center on the broad water across from their place. So I intend to swim there quite a fair bit as well. So I’m hoping to swim every day while I’m overseas, but at the moment, it’s about four days a week. Is it, are they at Southport there? Yes, yes. Yeah, that’s a great, great pool. They had the Com games or the, I’m trying to think, I think they had the Com games there. But yeah, terrific pool. That’s where we run clinics when we go up to the Gold Coast.

And usually a fair few lanes available as well. So yeah, you’ve certainly enjoyed that. With COVID, I haven’t been able to get back for a while. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah. But I’m looking to, I don’t think you can swim in that broad water, but I’m certainly going to be in that pool. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t think, I don’t think they do much swimming in there. I don’t know how. Yeah, I do try and build in a bit more of the open water stuff because it’s so much different to the lanes. Like I find lanes can only get you so far and then you need that open water as well. Yeah, there is a club that I’ve seen a bit on Facebook and it’s like Gold Coast Open Water Swimming Club that seem to go out, I don’t know, a couple of times a week at least and they could be good to join as well. They swim down there on the Gold Coast. So yeah, it could be good to jump in with them. Looks like there’s quite a several dozen

heading out at a time. So there’s that and also,

Phil Clayton runs a group down at Tully Creek there. So there’s another, yeah, there’s a few sort of open water things that can be done there, which is. Oh, look it up. I grew up swimming in Telebudger Creek. Oh, did you? Yeah, nice. Yeah. Well, I think they’re there most morning. So you’ll be able to probably fit into something there. Oh, great. And in terms of the eight week course, is there anything but in particular that helped you with your technique from the other aspects of the strike that we focus on there? Well, yeah, the eight week course, I thought it was good to

integrate with the plan. So it had the activities and then it had the plan. And it also introduced a few other things that I’d never heard of before, like the Serape effect, which I’m ridiculously uncoordinated. So I don’t think I really mastered that one particularly well. But for whatever reason, I did find that I was again improving what I was doing that because I think it changed up my, my, the way that I approached my reps and particularly with the timing intervals of the plan and so on.

And I sort of discussing it with a friend. And I think if I was honest with myself, I probably wasn’t working as hard as I should have been in the pool. And I think the way that it was laid out, it kind of just forced me to push a little bit harder. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it’s hard to work hard in the pool when first of all your intervals are 800 to 1000 each as well. Because it’s just like, you just don’t get that rest to be able to change, change pace. And, and with how those workouts are structured, there’s a lot of variable pace where as you said, it’s like 60, 70, 80, 90%. Like you, yeah, you’re sort of forced to put in a bit more effort and to be more mindful of what, what pace you’re going. Do you check your times on the stop clock or on your Garmin or anything like that? I use a Garmin watch.

And I mean, I’ve sort of had the same watch the whole time. So my Garmin files are pretty, you know, getting pretty big now. But yeah, just on what you were saying, it’s, I mean, for me, as I consider myself a very new swimmer, this idea that you can say, do a 50, where you swim hard for 50, swim easy for 50. And then swim again. It’s like, I didn’t even think of something like that.

Where it was like, okay, I just belt out 100 and I’ll just have a break and belt out another 100 and have a break. And it was things like that that I felt really,

really started to make me think about managing my stamina, if that makes sense. And, you know, when I could look ahead and see what the workout was, I can sort of, okay, I’ve got 100% to divide between this. And I think that’s what really built it. And coincidentally, I’d been trying to get fast at running and I was building in speed work into my runs. And then I sort of started to think, why can’t this principle work and swimming as well? Then I started to apply that with, and when I say apply, I mean really sort of just push myself a bit harder and swimming. And then my time started to come down again.

Yeah, really, just that simple stuff, it really increases your swimming IQ, where you just, I think you first of all, realize how little you knew when you first started and then you realize how much there is to learn. But then it just, it gives you this knowledge where you, yeah, you can sort of just pull on these different things that you’ve learned along the way. And then you can discover where you can find more speed, whether it be through technique, whether it be through training a bit differently, or maybe putting in a bit more effort here and there. And yeah, it’s just like, but it’s, you’re just not going to know that stuff when you first start. So I mean, being a year into it, or maybe a little bit more now, it’s good to see you becoming familiar with how elites from as well will train. And some of those technical things that the people will get taught in a squad as a kid or as a teenager, which sometimes it’s hard to get as an adult.

Yeah, I mean, that’s a good point. You can really tell the difference, I think, generally speaking in triathlon between somebody that swam in high school and somebody that didn’t. And just on those points that you mentioned, it’s like another example, it reminded me, is the power diamond activity from the catch challenge. I kind of did it. Oh, Brenton showed us this. We do this. I’m doing it. I kind of feel stupid going up and down the pool doing this. I get it. This is where my hands are meant to be. And then later on, our triathlon club actually organized a swim session with a coach that has an infinite pool, infinity pool. And he pointed out one of my problems was that I was generating all my power from my shoulders and not engaging my lats correctly and had me engaging my lats. And so then when I came to do the eight-week challenge, I faced this power diamond again. And I do the power diamond. And suddenly I realized, hey, I can move my shoulders

and this power diamond and actually engage the lap position with the power diamond. And suddenly it was like a light bulb goes off. So when I do the catch and pull, it’s just like…

I’ve done the YMCA. That’s one of my favorites. But it’s like this whole process just suddenly just made so much more sense. And this one isolated thing that I do, sort of just a jigsaw piece that just clicked in the place. So before you were in that power diamond phase, which for those listening is when you’re going through the catch and the pull and your hand’s about to… Well, it’s underneath your shoulder. It’s about halfway through the pull.

Your shoulders were sort of up here near your ears, were they? Like they’re too much up here. Yes. So I wasn’t in the correct position. Got you. So I had to drop them to get to the lats, so that I could then… Is it called the pull to go through? Yeah, it’s sort of the beginning of the pull. It’s that first phase, the pull. And it’s that part of the stroke during the power diamond where the most force is applied. It’s through that part of the stroke. And so if your shoulders are up near your ears, like you’re hunching your shoulders, like you’re saying, you’re using your upper traps more and sometimes through the front of the shoulder as well if you’re rolling the shoulder forwards, rather than the lats and those stronger muscles around your shoulders. So that’s a good distinction to make there. And there’s a lot going on through those different parts of the stroke. And a question I get a lot in clinics is,

where should my shoulder be when I’m reaching forwards and then going through the catch and then here? And it’s like, well, it’s so much to think about that, okay, you could probably think about it in the YMCA. You could probably make those changes with your shoulders, but you want to make sure the shoulders are still relaxed and they’re still moving. They’ll come forwards when you’re reaching. They’ll still be a bit forwards as you go through the catch, but then they’ll make their way down as you go through the power diamond. So it’s like, I find it sometimes a bit of a challenge to, how much can you simplify this while still explaining what needs to happen? It’s quite an interesting observation to make and it’s a great one that he picked up on it. And what did you notice when you made that change? What did it feel like for you?

Well, again, another part that it sort of fixed up was,

I think I was bringing my arm too wide for the pull. So when I bring my lat, it sort of brings my arm closer. So I think you call in your videos, you call it Tracing the Body. So I was too far wide and when you go back to the lat, you can bring the hand much closer to the body and trace the body.

It was kind of an epiphany for me in that when I looked at my results, a lot of my fastest times, I don’t mean my fastest, but my top 10, seven of my top 10 would be like in my warm-ups rather than in my sets.

It was like an epiphany that I realized when I was the most relaxed

and not trying to force things was when I was swimming the fastest.

And so when I, this power diamond, I can, it’s kind of like relaxing the shoulders into that position. And I think I was spending too much time just trying to force the position and force corrections and force my hand through when it’s actually kind of a very natural sort of movement once you get used to it. And it’s kind of like slow down to speed up. And I think that made all the difference. Do you think, do you feel like you are trying to continue the high elbow further than further past that position? Like were you trying to have a high elbow catch that keep it through to the power diamond and further through there? Yeah, I think that’s a good observation.

Because I see it quite a bit that sometimes we’re so focused on getting a good catch out the front that we want to try and hold that catch, but all the way through the stroke under the water. And that’s where people end up really wide. But once you’ve got that catch, let it go. Because you’ve got to let the hand come in and the elbow will actually sort of drop a bit like to move back inwards. And that’s so it moves in a more natural position. So it’s a really, really common one when people are hyper focused on the catch. So yeah, there’s a lot of moving places there, isn’t it? Yeah, because when I started, I’d never heard of high elbow before. And that was kind of a novelty for me. And I was like obsessed with high elbow. So it’s like just step back a little bit from that. Yeah, yeah. And it’s, I mean, when you’re thinking about the stuff, a lot of it, you’re very conscious of it. And so it can be, you know, not feel that natural or fluent.

And then after a while, you can then just allow it to be a bit more subconscious so you can just swim. And it’s happening without you needing to think too much about it. And that’s when I think you start to move a little bit more naturally through the stroke. But yeah, when you’re learning something new, it’s always that those conscious movements aren’t the most natural or they don’t feel the best. But sometimes you’ve just got to go through that to get to that point where you can do it without thinking much about it. Yeah, I agree. And looking forwards, what excites you about your swim over the next couple of months? What are you aiming to achieve in terms of pace or perhaps how you’d like to feel or where would you like your stroke to get to? Well, I think now because I did Ironman Florida last year, which was probably the worst swim I’ve ever done in terms of quality of swim. Had a DNF rate of I think it was 23% and I survived.

So my stamina is I have no problems with my stamina. Like that was always one of my concerns is like, can I finish the swim? I’m 100% confident I can finish the swim now. So I’m trying to sort of I have sort of two figures. One is like my fastest 100 and one is what I’d call my say iron distance 100. And I want to kind of bring those two closer together.

Yeah, nice. And so do you have a pace in mind that you’re looking to get down to? Well, my I mean, for the sake of Florida, that was in September last year. I was swimming in about one and a half hours for the 2.4 miles. I ended up it ended up taking me 2010 because of the conditions. But I kind of feel one and a half now is my minimum. I certainly want to go under that Eagleman. I swam 40 minutes last year.

And so I want to get that down closer to probably 33. I think I can do 33 this year. But I probably long distance. I’m looking at around one minute 35 per 100 for the Ironman.

Yeah, fantastic. Is it per 100 yards? 100 yards. Yeah. Yeah, I think that would get me about an hour and a quarter.

Yeah. Yeah, that would be that’d be about right. Yeah, one hour or 120. Well, that’d be that’d be a good, good achievement, especially from starting out at your 220s. And down to down to that to be a great result. So any, any final thoughts before we finish up the podcast here?

No, I mean, the only thing I would say is it’s watch and learn. Like to be honest, pretty much everything I know, 90% of what I know from swimming is from watching your YouTube channel and your, your courses. And because I don’t have really access to coaches and so on. But it’s like, I understand, I try and understand why I do things. And I think it’s there if you, if you want to do it. Yeah, it’s, I find the same. Like I, for me, you know, I’ve swam since I was young. So I’m most of this stuff is somewhat natural, but I still have to think about technique. But for me, that the learning for me is in surfing, that doesn’t necessarily come naturally to me. But there’s, you know, there’s some coaches there that I’ll listen to. And it’s, yeah, it’s just, it’s great when you get some information that makes a difference. You feel the difference. And just, and for me, it’s like, all right, I want to, I want to keep getting better at this.

I want to keep learning more. And, and it’s just so much fun when you, you know, when you understand like, yeah, why, why are you doing something? And then, and then what the, you know, what the elites or what the pros are, pros are doing and trying to work towards that. So it’s, yeah, just, it makes a lot more enjoyable than just getting in the car and driving around the block several times. Yeah. And I mean, I think as well, I had a rookie, common rookie mistake. And then I used to, for lack of a better term, disrespect swimming, take it for granted in some, in some ways. And so when you realize how technical it is and how much you have to learn, you get a much greater respect for it. And it’s the sort of thing, if you put in the work, you get the reward as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you certainly appreciate when you watch someone like, like Florian Wellbrok who I did a video on recently or Dan Smith, like it gives you great appreciation

for the swimmers that can swim like that. Because as, as much as it looks like, it’s just like, that looks pretty easy. Yeah, you certainly understand that it’s not and it takes a bit of work to get there. So yeah, Matthew, I appreciate you jumping on the podcast and sharing your experience over the last year or so. And good luck for those races and that back-to-back eye, man. That’ll be a lot of fun. I look forward to hearing how you go. Thanks very much for having me. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post [Case Study] From 2:20 to 1:22 For 100 Yards with Matthew Tones appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In today’s episode, I have a swimmer whom I worked with over the last few months. I have done some stroke analysis and coaching together for a while and he has been getting some good results I thought that’s a good thing to talk about in the podcast.

01:18 Swimming Background

View our freestyle clinic schedule around Australia.

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. On today’s episode, I have a swimmer that I’ve worked with over the last few, well, longer than the last few months, but I’ve got Scott Roth on the podcast. So Scott, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. I’m glad to be here. I sent you a message a couple of weeks ago saying, would you like to jump on the podcast because we’ve done some stroke analysis coaching together for a while. And you’ve been getting some really good results. And one of the things you said was your stroke count had gone from an average of about 18 strokes a lap down to 14 consistently. And I thought, well, that’s a that’s a good thing to talk about and see what you’ve done to make. But you’re also swimming pretty quick. You’re

racing with racing as a master swimmer. And I think you went to 103 for the 100 short course yards. The other day, and you said you’re targeting sub 60, which is always a good target to go for. So it’d be great to get you on the podcast, talk about what where you were when we first started working together, what’s your background as a swimmer? And then what are some of those things that you’ve worked on in the last couple of months and longer than that to see improvements in your in your swimming? So maybe just to start what is your swimming background? And what do you do for work as well? So how do you fit all of that in? Sure, sure. So I’m a master swimmer. I just turned 60 lax last week. And growing up, I, you know, I was I was an age group swimmer. I swam from age, maybe about eight to 18 on club teams. So back into 60s and 70s, there wasn’t a lot of emphasis on freestyle techniques, at least that I can

remember. Pretty old school kind of swimmer, you know, big wide S pull through my freestyle. And the only way you got better was to do more of it. So if you’re doing it wrong, you were doing it wrong compounded. And I got to be pretty good in my teenage years, made it to New Jersey State. I’m from the states New Jersey State, the Junior Olympics. And by the time I was about 17 or 18, I kind of burned out from the sport. And also, since you asked what I do, I’m an architect. So when I applied to colleges to get into architecture school, there really was no time to have a sport at the same time. So my swimming career pretty much ended at age 18. But I still kept in shape. I got into track and cross country and started to do some cycling. And then triathlon became very popular is actually kind of was born in my era. And when I got into triathlon a little bit, I realized I had to jump back into the pool and do something to be

able to make it through a 800 meter swim. So I joined a local gym. This is in my 30s now. Just probably about four to six weeks before triathlon, just to get my feet wet and feel like I can make it through the swim. And that’s pretty much all I did as far as training. And then after triathlon season was over, I put it away, it was done with swimming at that point again. So years went by, decades wait by, I stopped doing triathlons. And it wasn’t until I was in my early 50s that I started to get back into physical shape again, started with running and cycling. I really enjoyed cycling because it didn’t give me many injuries and running did. So I dropped the running and kept with the cycling. And I actually started a cycling club here in Chicago. It’s been going for 10 years now. And there’s a bunch of younger guys, I’m the oldest one on on the club. And the younger guys all are into triathlon, some of them are very good. A lot of post grads

right out of college. So they’re fresh off their college swimming and cycling and triathlon days. So I had to really start to keep up with this group. And as I’m aging at the same time. So one of the guys on our cycling club, he is a swimmer as well. He does triathlons. And he was on this master’s team that’s here in Chicago. And he invited me to come along because we’re going to do a triathlon together. And I was like, look, before I get into a two hour or hour and a half type of training session, I got to make sure I can handle, you know, three to 4000 meters in a in one swim in a workout. So I spent about two or three weeks kind of mimicking what they had on the whiteboard, as far as the workout was concerned. And I could not do any of the intervals that were on that board. I barely could understand the workouts. I mean, this is how much the sport has changed, right? I mean, I would read these workouts and it looked

like an algebraic formula to me. You know, I was used to doing 10 of one thing or five of one thing. But all of these sets had different speeds and variables and stroke counts. And I just didn’t know what it all meant. So I finally said, look, I’ll just dive in and see where I’m at. So I went to my first practice. And this was about a year and a half ago. And the coaches were very good. We actually have the next Olympian as one of the coaches from Hungary, his his country. And they’re very good at structuring the workouts. But you know, when you get into a group or a squad or a team, you know, it’s hard to work on any kind of stroke technique, when you’ve got 3040 people in a pool, and you’re really just trying to get everyone in a workout in an hour to an hour and a half. So they put me on the slow lane, and I slowed, I progressively moved up to the some of the faster lanes. But I was getting, I was getting in shape, maybe

aerobically, but I wasn’t getting any faster. And when I would finish a set or like a few 100s, I was just gassed. We just, I couldn’t, I just figured was old age. So anyway, at one point, the coach started, you know, pointing yelling out pointers to me in the middle of the set, which is not the best way to correct your stroke when you’re trying to survive. And all he kept saying to me was you’re spinning, you’re spinning, you’re not gliding, you’re just moving your arms as fast as you can. You’re not grabbing the water, you’re slipping. He’s saying all these terms. And I thought I was a good swimmer. I had no idea what he was talking about. And truth be told, I just took it all to heart because I’m a learner, and I’m going to fix this problem. So I just jumped, I got back from the workout and my wife looked at me and I was just deflated. And I said, look, I thought I was doing great. But you know, they must have reinvented freestyle

since I did it last time. So I said, I got to blow this thing up and kind of start over again. There’s a whole new way of doing things. I barely understood the workout and these terms that were being presented to me, I didn’t understand. So I got on YouTube, as anyone would do, and started looking up freestyle. And, you know, a plethora of videos come up. And I was like, wow, there’s a lot of focus on this, on this one stroke. You just started YouTube. Oh, my goodness. And, you know, and they all kind of said the same thing, but they all had different approaches. But what happened was, I wanted to be more effortless, because what my main problem was I was getting gassed after, you know, 100 repeats with, you know, on a 145 or two minute interval, which to me that that seemed pretty easy. So I noticed your videos effortless swimming, which is effortless freestyle is what I was looking for. And started watching your videos. And I was like, wow,

this is like, right on point. It’s simple to understand. The thing that I really loved about it was you had real people doing it. It wasn’t just charts and graphs and diagrams. And they weren’t all professionals. There are some professionals in there. But you had other people posting their issues. And then you’re critiquing them. And I’m like, wow, this is really cool. This is exactly what I need. So I didn’t tell my coaches back at the master’s team that I was going to jump in to an online coaching service, because I don’t want to offend them. And I wanted to get this corrected so that I could actually perform better at the practices and not get yelled at all the time. So I started with I didn’t jump into the membership right away. I started watching your videos that had more of the drills and what the drills were for. And I would try to get to the pool five or 10 minutes early before the warm up and try to implement a couple of these drills, not

really knowing what I was trying to correct at the same time. And you know, they seem to have a purpose. They seem to, you know, in the warm up, I seem to be able to do some things. But then once we started the practice, it was just all on and you know, everything kind of fell apart. So that’s when I decided, you know what, I’m going to join this program and get some real tutoring and some real coaching on the side here. So the next thing I have to do is technology, right? How am I going to record myself? I had no idea. So I just so I searched underwater cameras, I got myself a GoPro, had to figure out a couple of weeks, I just work that thing, and then get to the gym or get to the pool on the days that we weren’t working out, and actually record myself. So that’s what I did. I got into, you know, I got my own name, this is all during COVID. So it was very difficult to get pool time on top of it. And our

particular pool really didn’t want anyone recording anything. So I had to find, you know, the outside lane at an odd hour of the day to get in there and record myself and then shoot them off to you and give you my little background story in a text or an email and here we are. So yeah, that’s a long winded background, but that’s how we got to where we are right now. That’s great. I was speaking to someone on the weekend, she said, I got she got some instruction. I think she went maybe went to a clinic or some, you know, like a couple hour thing. And the only feedback she got was that the only thing good about your stroke is your breathing. And she was like, okay, well, that’s like, it’s really helpful. Thanks so much for that. And I find it’s like as a, yeah, it’s just like, first of all, that’s, but yeah, it’s not very helpful. It doesn’t help me make any changes. And probably don’t feel good about you about your swimming. So the

approach I’ve always wanted to take with people, especially adults is well, first of all, people probably don’t know what they shouldn’t shouldn’t be doing. And that’s that’s the first thing. So why give them a hard time if they’re not doing the right thing. And secondly, there’s a lot to coordinate when you’re swimming. So, you know, you can’t expect people to be swimming, swimming perfectly, and to get things straight away. It’s like these things take time. So why be a bit of why be an asshole when you’re coaching? Why don’t you just be, you know, patient and nice about it. And people are gonna be a lot more receptive that way. So I think not to say that your coaches are that way. But I certainly know some some coaches that, yeah, that have that approach. And I just don’t find it very helpful at all. And I’ve had coaches like that in the past. And then in terms of what your so what we sort of picked out at the start and what you’ve

worked on over that time. What were some of those initial things that that we saw and and what were you thinking about then when you went back to the pool to work on them? Sure. So I guess the thing that really stuck in my head, which was the critique from my coaches and and believe me, I really think that we have a great coaching staff. And they do take the time to work with you when you asked for it. But I didn’t even know what to ask for. I mean, that doesn’t really work. Sorry. But the whole spinning and slipping thing, I really didn’t understand what that meant. And it wasn’t until you I sent you the videos. And the first thing you said to me was, you’re not front quadrant swimming, or freestyle stroke. I had no idea what that meant. And then when you showed it in the video of how the quadrants were broken down and how you have to have one hand always in front of your head. To me, it was almost like a three quarter

catch up kind of the drill that we would do in practice. But you know, drills that I knew 40 years ago were to relax. That was to give yourself a break from the workout. It wasn’t to correct anything. So yeah, the front quadrant freestyle was really the big thing that was the eye opener to me. And then how to do it. And then how is that going to make me better in the pool? Back in and started trying it. And the first thing I noticed was, I’ve got a lot of dead space when I reach out and try to grab, you know, get the other hand in. And what I ended up doing was, as you mentioned, I was kicking way too hard in between the poles. And I was just as exhausted trying to do what I was, you know, the distances I was doing before, but it might look prettier. So it didn’t really accomplish what I was set out to do. And then we talked and we went back and forth on some other videos. And you mentioned about trying, trying not to put all your effort into the kick

into these two, as you pull from each side. And what I then did was, you know, I looked at your eight week program that you had. And in one of those weeks, I think it was week seven was about the, the kick to match the timing of your pull. So I really just focused on that. My natural kick is kind of a two beat crossover kind of kick. I was kind of a middle distance distance swimmer as a kid. And I guess that just, you know, fit me well. So I tried to really implement the one kick per pole on each side. And then I’ll fill in a little bit in between where I could. And then it wasn’t until you said the word, I’m very visual because I’m an architect, right? It wasn’t until you mentioned to me, think of it as skating. That’s when the light bulb went off in my head. It was like, ah, I know how to skate. I know how to ski. I know what that glide kind of feels like. And when you put an effort in and you get the

most in return for that one push. So for weeks, that’s all I kept thinking was glide, skate, glide, skate, and really try to get that timing down with my down kick on one pole with one leg. And see how that works out. So I felt like I was really improving. And I think I was. And then what I realized was it felt slow. But I was still going the same speed. And that really didn’t click in my head until I started applying this to the repeat sets we were doing in practice, because I didn’t want to end up at the back of the line in lay line. While I’m trying all this stuff. But I realized I’m staying in the same position on that. I’m doing this technique. And as you mentioned, my in the middle of the 200, I said, Well, let me wait till about the 125 or 150 and count my strokes, because I’m kind of exhausted that at that point, and I’ll see what how I am when I’m tired. And I counted my strokes and it was 14 strokes. And I realized, you know what, I’ve always been an

18 stroke per lap swimmer, and my stroke count is coming down. And I’m hitting about the same times. That was a couple seconds faster on the 100 with this new technique. And nobody’s yelling at me. So something’s working. So yeah, so that was the big change in my stroke. From that, now I’m now we’re really working on, you know, getting my catch correct, I think. And believe me, the catch, the reach in the catch, that whole high elbow recovery thing, that’s all new to me. I mean, back in my day, 40 years ago, high elbow swimming meant put your elbow towards the sky when you take it out of the water. It was to get you that kind of hinge look right when you’re swimming on the over the water, not under the water. Nothing was done under the water because we didn’t have cameras. So anyway, yeah, I started to really focus on now that I’ve got that kind of concept down at the front quadrant. And I’m doing it enough now that when I

stopped doing it, or if I’m too tired, and I’m pulling down too hard, too fast, I recognize it. Where before it was the other way around, it was like, I had to think about doing it. Now I realize when I’m not doing it. So I know that’s that’s kind of a muscle memory thing. So yeah, now with the catch, I’m really starting to focus on where that positioning to be and applying some of those other drills that you have the YNCA and that sort of stuff to get that catch down. And I think even mentioned in one of my more recent videos that the catch is right there. It’s in the right position. And now it’s more of a tweaking thing. I’m still doing a little bit of crossover. I’ve always had a crossover on my stroke as I pulled down. But I noticed that it’s less now than it was before. And that’s probably because you know, if I’m not doing front quadrant, I’m just spinning my arms so much. I’m trying to balance myself in whichever way the

arms are moving is the way they’re moving. So we got one arm straightened out. The other arm’s almost there, but it still crosses a little bit just on breathing now. So if you’re making progress there. But anyway, after all this technique stuff, we had a swim meet for the masters team come up about three months ago. And I hadn’t been in a pool for time, other than, you know, a couple sets at the end of a practice, but I hadn’t been off the starting blocks in 40 years. So that was a little intimidating. And that’s a whole nother subject to talk about. And so we went to the swimming and I said, you know, I’m just going to do a 50 and 100 free. I’m a breastrope or two, I had a 50 breaststroke in there. But when I did that got on the blocks for the 100 free, I had no idea what to enter my time at because you know, I’ve been working with you. And I had gotten my repeat times down to about 117 on a 130 interval. And this is short course yards. And

actually now I’m down to about 115, 116 on that same set. But I didn’t know what it was going to feel like fresh off a block. So I did I went all out and I did a 103 free. And I was like, whoa, this is this is pretty exciting. So I got something now to hang on my wallet, you know, look, I can I can actually have a chance here to break a minute. So my goal, like I said, is to be under 60 at age 60. And I’ve got about two more months to do that, because I actually qualified for the US Masters Nationals, which is at the end of April here in San Antonio, Texas. So that’s my goal.

A quick note from our sponsor. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by form swim goggles. With these goggles, you don’t have to look at the pace clock anymore, or be one of those swimmers in the pool always grabbing for their watch. With form smart swim goggles, you can see all of your key metrics while you’re swimming distance, pace, stroke rate, they’ve got it all. And the swim data is displayed on the Google lens. And you can customize the display to see the metrics that you want to. And I was worried that it was going to be distracting. But you can literally see through the display, the metrics are always there, but you have to choose to focus on them. It’s really impressive. And it makes hitting intervals or any kind of specific training much more manageable and achievable. And the goggles track it all. It’s automated. So from the time you start your session to the end of the swim, you don’t have to press any

buttons in between. It automatically tracks everything. Form also works with a bunch of the best pro athletes out there, including Lionel Sanders, Sarah Crowley, Hannah Wells and the Olympic champion Usama Malouli to name a few. These form goggles are for all types of swimming too. One pair of goggles and you can use them in the pool, the open water. You can use them in swim spas and endless pools too. So the same pair of goggles can be used in all of these different environments. The battery life is incredible too. One hour charge is 16 hours of swimming time battery life. And you can have the display on either your right or your left eye. The goggles themselves come with anti-fog solution that’s used in dive masks. So it’s great in terms of quality. And there’s a protective case with a nifty drainage solution. So after you swim you can store them safely. And while the goggles connect to the form swim app on your

smartphone too, they all sync with the form app. And then you can review all of the details of your swim. And you can see what other swimmers are up to in the form swim community as well. I’m a big fan of these goggles. I was really impressed when I use them. And I use them for the vast majority of the sessions that I’m currently doing. To find out more about the form swim goggles, go to formswim.com. And you can use our coupon code effortless at checkout and save $15 off your order. Back to the podcast. Fantastic. And so going back to the first thing you mentioned there, which was the front quadrant part of the stroke, that can take a couple of sessions to work out for people who, let’s say, aren’t front quadrant, because sometimes they’ll either go too far with it, too much of a catch up where one hand’s meeting the other way out the front. There’s a big pause. And then you’re kicking hard to try and work through

that dead spot in the stroke. And so it sounds like you hit that. And then we had to find that sweet spot in the middle, which just takes a bit of, yeah, a bit of practice. And yeah, it’s like, once you get it, it’s like, oh, okay, this is, this feels good. You can get that sensation of skating as opposed to feeling you’re on this treadmill with no stop button on it. And that helps keep the heart right down. Obviously, the stroke count comes down along along with it. And I find that skating

analogy helpful for a lot of people because that’s what it feels like. It’s like you’re just skating on that arm or that that armpit every time you take a stroke there. And we want to keep the hand in motion. It should never stop out in front. And, and that’s kind of what skating is, like a nice skater on the rink there. It’s just like that travel time left, left to right. Now, obviously, it’s like a 50 sprints, maybe a little bit different. You won’t have that much of a skating sensation because your stroke rate’s up high. But anything mid to long distance, it’s, for most people, it’s going to feel like they’re, they’re skating side to side. And I like the fact that you’ve now gone from stack that conscious where you really have to think about things and conscious. And when you’re conscious about all these movements, it’s very taxing in terms of energy wise, just mentally, like it uses a lot of energy to think about this

consistently. But then enough time with enough practice, it’s then become subconscious. And you realize when you’re not when those things aren’t in place. And that’s, it’s great when you’ve got that awareness because then, you know, you can pick up if things have fallen out of place. And you know what it should feel like and, and yeah, and you got to that, that point, which is, which is terrific. Do you know roughly how long that took for you to make it become subconscious? Yeah, I would say it was a good couple months, if not more. And you know, even to this day, you know, at the end of a practice, when really pushing hard, I really then have to really think, okay, what am I doing here? Am I trying to make this just make it interval? Or am I thinking about not falling, not having my stroke fall apart? And I always choose to have my stroke be the number one concern there. And I still make it. So, you know, it’s important because, you know,

if you’re if you’re if you’re pushing hard, and you’re doing it wrong, or things start to fall apart, it’s not going to help you in the long run. And that’s, that’s kind of what I’ve learned, you know. So yeah, it took two or three months for that to really sink in. Like I said, now, now I notice when I’m not doing it, which is tells me that it’s really embedded in there. And when it came to your hundred freestyle, your sprint in the race there, do you know, were you using a two beat kick or were you going with a six beat? Do you have any idea about what what sort of style you’re doing there? Sure, it was definitely more than two.

Because, you know, I never knew this either that you can change your kicks, right? Based on the speed and the distance you’re doing, because like I said, I was always kind of a middle distance, the distance swimmer. So I never really needed that explosiveness from the blocks to the finish and keep the motor running. I like to pace myself. And then, you know, obviously on the last 50 or the last whatever of whatever you’re doing, you would turn up the kick. But yeah, on that hundred, I was definitely a four, probably six is my guess. But, you know, and I also have learned, and this is more recently, is when we get into these sprint sets, because a lot of people are asking me questions now and I’m trying to help them, you know, through this too. And they say, look, I’m a sprinter, I’m never going to do more than a hundred. Why do I need to lay out there and do this thing that would be doing if you’re doing like a mile swim in the ocean

or something like that? I said, you know what, that’s a good point. And then what I noticed was in my own hundred when I was sprinting, I didn’t necessarily take that extra time out there. But it made me reach further and I felt the water more. So I was really aware of grabbing the water where before I would just be spinning and trying to try to make it as fast as I could. So there’s a sensation you get out of it, is I guess is what I’m saying is that you feel the force of you pulling the water differently, even though your stroke rate or count is picking up when you’re sprinting. Yeah, it’s a good it’s a good question for them to to ask. And when you look at when you look at sprinters, really good sprinters, you’ll get Caleb Dresswall, who’s probably the best, best example of the fastest man on the planet over 15 100. He he’s like super high stroke, right? But if you look at him under the water, he still enters and reaches forwards before he

starts the catch. He doesn’t go in and straight down. There’s still that reach. And I think it’s a combination of like you get like you’re more streamlined. That’s kind of your fastest point through the stroke there when you’re reaching forwards, because that’s when you’re most streamlined. So you want to take that split second to be in that position so you can maximize the kind of propulsion from your rotation and your hand exiting. So you need to keep your length there for a split second. And then the other part of it, too, is when you are up here, instead of maybe like you’ve just gone deep, you get that length through these muscles and your torso and your hips and you really get more of that sort of Serape effect where those muscles all work together there. Whereas if you’re just like short here, you never quite quite get it because the muscles haven’t haven’t lengthened. So I think it’s a combination of of those two things. And even

though it’s a lot more subtle when you’re sprinting, it’s it’s still really, really important. And I feel a lot of people I see at clinics where probably like, let’s say one in, I don’t know, one in three to a quarter of the adults that come to clinics, they don’t have that reach phase. It’s just enter and straight down and it’s like so much more drag, first of all, and you’re missing out on that much of your setup phase in there in the catch. And so yeah, if you’re doing that, that’s an easy win just to make things easier and to find some extra speed. And you know, I’d say a good good majority of people who haven’t had much instruction. And if they look like they’re swimming short, that’s a big a big factor, I’d say. Right. Right. The other thing I noticed too, and I think I mentioned this in one of our critiques was I had taken a break because I was getting some rotator cuff problems. And I got I had to go through physical therapy to

work on that. And I was just as I was starting to get this concept down. But I think I was I was pushing too hard the other way. And it was putting too much stress on my right rotator cuff and my right shoulder. And until I got this glide down and this to be kicked thing down, the shoulder resolved itself. So I say that’s a testament to this way of swimming. Absolutely. So you felt like you were putting too much power into the the downward part of the string. Yeah, yeah, because, you know, the only way to get if you’re swimming that way, the only way to get faster is to pull harder. There’s no there’s no efficiency out of it. So, you know, that’s probably what I was doing was just pulling too hard, too fast, too deep, too straight armed. And it just wore on my shoulder. And then, you know, switching over to this method. My shoulders resolve itself. That’s great. It’s great to hear. And it’s, it’s really common. I have a number of summers who will

come to clinic. So I work with online that they’ve got shoulder pain. You know, it’s pretty common when you’re swimming. And large majority of the time, it’s from something that they’re doing in there in their stroke. And there’s a few causes there. So one is like you mentioned, they’re just applying too much downwards force in the beginning. And so it’s like, you know, if you’re up here and you’re pushing hard, it’s like, well, yeah, that loads up through the rotator cuff a lot. So that’s sort of no surprise. I had a girl on the weekend, a young girl who’s training for the English Channel later this year. She was getting some shoulder pain. She’s doing some big caves. But one of the things she was doing was she was great summer, wonderful looking catch and pull. But she was overdoing it to the point where she was trying to be too shallow, like, you know, high elbows and just trying to go high near the surface. So she was very

shallow. And then really close to the body. She was just getting jammed up through there. So it wasn’t allowing her to kind of use the bigger, stronger muscles to her back and shoulders because she was overdoing her high elbow. And then when she went a bit deeper, she was like, yeah, this feels so much better. And then there’s sometimes I think with the recovery, like you mentioned the high elbow recovery, trying to come over really high over the top. When people are trying to do that, they normally just their hands too close to the body, they’re like, it’s an awkward position. And when I demonstrate it to when I’m in person, I’m like, I’m trying to be careful because it’s like, it doesn’t feel great when you with your shoulder. So if you can be in more natural position, which is usually a little bit wider, yeah, a lot more comfortable. So there’s a couple of things there that if you have got shoulder problems when you swim, tech it can be because

of your your techniques. So there, you know, some of the three, three main ones there that I that I see.

Sure, sure. And the other thing you mentioned earlier was so you’re catching your pool, one of the things you were doing was coming under the body. So the fingertips pointing off to the side of the pool, instead of pointing mostly to the bottom. And, and so you said that for you, it was because you weren’t reaching forwards that you’d enter, you’d go deep. And then there’s kind of nowhere else for that arm to go except for under the body, because it’s got to pull through. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And then also, the other thing I noticed too, on the front quadrant version of doing that, and getting the timing down with my kick. So, you know, you can’t do everything at once, you have to learn these things in parts. So once I started understanding the kind of catch up way of doing the pull. Now I’m trying to memorizing and time my down kick with my arm. So that forces me to leave it out there in the right position longer. Otherwise, you know, I

get all out of balance and kind of snake my way down, down the pool. So yeah, having the correct catch is just as important as doing the front quadrant to make this whole thing work in the timing. And that that kick timing, there’s sort of two ways to think about it, the one that you mentioned, which is you want to try and time your right arm catch. At the same time, you kick down on that that right side. And especially for you know, usually especially for a two beat kick and more just this sort of style. That’s a good way to think of it. And when you get it working together, like you feel it, you kind of just feel everything working together and you get that skating sensation. And the other way to think of it, which is it’s basically the same thing, but it’s another way just to think of things is you can either time your tanned entry with your right foot kicking down. So going opposite. It’s basically the same thing, but a different

way to think of it. And I find some people prefer it the first way. Some people prefer it the second way. It really just just depends. And it’s a very hard to think about anything else apart from your kick timing when you’re doing it because it’s just I know it’s a bit of an awkward one to kind of be thinking about much when you when you swim. Yeah, it’s like it’s like dancing, which I’m not good at either.

Yeah, me either. Don’t worry about that one.

Yeah, so it’s it is a bit of a tricky one. Something to help there is that if you’re trying to think about it on both sides, it can be a little bit too overwhelming. So I’ll get people to start by thinking of one side only. Just go right arm right leg, tune into that sort of feeling and that rhythm. And then once you’ve kind of got that, just just go by feel rather than thinking too much about catching kick together. Just just tune into that rhythm that you’ve you’ve got and dance as best as you can when you when you swim. Right. Right. Yeah, and and to your points, I’m only about, I don’t know, three or four weeks into this trying to really focus on it. And you’re right. I’m doing it for both sides is difficult for me right now. I’ve got the right hand right foot motion synchronized. I’m not quite there on the left, but I’m doing it enough that it’s making an improvement for me to not leave my, you know, not fill that dead speed with a

bunch of dead space with a bunch of kicks. Yeah. And that’s so in for those that are doing the eight week faster freestyle course in the membership. That’s week seven. We talk about kick kick timing. And yeah, a lot of feedback I’ve had is that like it that that’s helped a lot of people reduce their stroke count because when things are working together, then obviously you’re going to travel further with each stroke and it’s going to be a lot less, a lot less effort. But we work on that in week in week seven because we get some of the other things just in place first with balance and breathing and recovery and all those sorts of things. So you could work on it earlier on. But I think, yeah, towards the end, I find is is best for most people because it’s one of those things that’s hard to think about for too much. It can be a bit overwhelming. Sure. Sure. So looking at looking forwards, what what what do you enjoy most about about your swimming and being

back in the water after swimming as a teenager and then not being in the water for for a number of years?

Well, I guess what I’m so excited about is I feel like there’s so much more to learn and so much more to correct and so much better to get even as I age. The proofs in the pudding in my times that are dropping. And I look at this as a lifelong thing now where before it was just like, you know, the season was over. I’ll thank goodness and then you moved on to another sport. But this is now something that’s enjoyable. And, you know, my goal, my real long term goal is to look like the guy in your video. What’s his name? Dan Smith, the easiest 110 per 100 meters freestyle. If I can make my stroke, I don’t know if I’ll do 110. But if I can make my stroke look like that guy, that’s that’s my goal.

You’ll be getting the comments at the at the pool when when you’re swimming like Dan is there. It’s it’s a beautiful. Yeah, isn’t it? And it’s just it’s like poetry. Yeah, it is. It is. There’s

there’s a girl who just recently completed a double crossing of Lake Taupo, which is over in New Zealand. It’s about 40 Ks each way. So it’s about an 80 K swim. And so there’s a video that was posted on just one of the swim groups, New Zealand swim groups. And she has she’s got a stroke very much like that. And it’s just a beautiful stroke. And she’s doing that for this big long swim. I’m going to I think contact her and maybe get her on the podcast as well and share that footage because it’s just it’s mesmerizing to watch when you see someone with that that grace and that timing. And just that sort of perfect looking stroke. So it’s yeah, it’s achievable and 70th birthday to cruising up and down, even if it’s one 20 pace looking like that. I’d say it’s a good thing to aim for. So I’ve got to appreciate you being on the podcast and it’s been great working with you. I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes. Thank you. I enjoyed it.

And I look forward to keep doing it as well. Thank you, Brandon. 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 Learning To Skate In The Water with Scott Roth appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Today, my guest is Abbie Fish, who is the founder and technique coach at Swim like A. Fish. In this episode, we talked about coaching kids, adults, and some things that will help them become more successful and better swimmers later on.

01:20 Swimming Background

Swim Like A. Fish

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Abby Fish. Abby, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate the time. So you’ve got a background in coaching and a background in working a lot with juniors and teenagers with their swimming, as well as adults too. And I think today it’d be good to chat about what are some of those things that you see in the kids as they develop, as they get older? And what are some of those things that you like to coach and make sure that technically they’ve got in place that will then help them go on to become more successful, better swimmers later on. And we’ll also talk about some things that maybe in some crossover that you see with adults that you’ve coached.

And so like myself, you do a lot of face-to-face coaching. You do a lot of underwater filming and analysis. And so you’ve got a good understanding of that as well. So I think we’ll have a lot to talk about because from what I’ve seen with what you do, there’s quite a crossover with what you do over there in the States, what I do here in Australia. So be interested to get your perspective on quite a few things. So just to start with for those listening, what’s your background in swimming and coaching and how did that all start for you? Yeah, yeah. Well, if we go back to like the first to the first, I started swimming when I was four years old, kind of trying to emulate what my brother was doing in my sister because I’m the baby of our family. They quickly fell in love with the sport and pretty much since I was four, I’ve never really left it. And so, yeah, swimming for me was kind of like my outlet growing up.

I was multi-sported all through middle school and high school. And then in college, I really narrowed my focus into trying to make the Olympic team or tried out for Olympic trials and didn’t do as well as I wanted, which was really disappointing, especially because I kind of like really, you know, like zeroed my focus in and like hyper focused on that goal. But I ended up getting to swim in college here at the University of Georgia which has a great program. They’re well known for producing Olympians quad after quad after quad under like a legendary coach, Jack Barrely. And so, you know, for just like someone who I would say I myself like proclaimed swimming nerd, that was kind of like a really sweet step to have as I was getting older. So, yeah, when I was retiring from my career, I was it was hard for me. I had a shoulder injury. I still loved swimming, but I wasn’t sure how much my shoulder could take

being a butterflyer and it was hard. I was like, I don’t know if I’m really done. I don’t feel like I got everything that I wanted or I didn’t achieve everything that I wanted. So I started coaching kind of coincidingly as I was still training. And then, I don’t know, it was really a natural transition ever since then. So it was like I slowly kind of stepped away or stepped out of the pool myself and then just walked around to the other side and started from there. That’s funny, but I’ve got a fairly sort of similar start. I was I started around about four, I think at my first swim race when I was four, I caught up with my mum and dad on the weekend and they were trying to determine whether it was four or five years old that did my first swim race. And then I just missed out on Olympic trial qualification and then started coaching when I went to university and yeah, but that’s it. I just sort of stepped around the other side, got a qualification to coach

and not that I think I’ll learn much from that qualification, but then started to figure it out as I went and have been coaching ever since. So it’s yeah, fairly sort of similar, similar sort of storyline there. And what what is it about coaching that you found to be different than the swimming part? So obviously it’s the same skill, it’s swimming, but then you have to teach it. What what were some of those early lessons that you realised or learnt when you began your coaching career? Yeah, so I would say like for me, the one thing that I think separates coaching, but there’s still a little bit of crossover from like my own personal swimming

was like I really enjoyed the relationship side. But for me at the beginning, like seeing the little kids like age group kids, younger kids coming into the pool and being so excited to go to practice or talk to their coaches, you know, and it was fun. Was it the reminder that I needed when I was so, you know, kind of like hyper focused on the Olympic team is everything to me like this is what I want. So just let me know that there’s more aid of life and there was also more to swimming. So that relational side is something that I still hold really strongly and even before we started like officially recording this podcast, we were talking about like the business and how you felt kind of like your digital business wasn’t a real business until you started doing like in person things. And I can totally resonate with that in a lot of ways because when I first started coaching, you know, I was like, oh, I love the relationship side.

And then I went into this track of like, and I still have it like I want to be virtually, you know, very well known as a coach and like be able to help people no matter where they live. But I used to think that that was the only thing I wanted to do. And there’s only so much of, you know, a relationship and really that athlete coach, like dynamic that you can get through a computer screen. So it took me a while to like get back to the original reason that I started coaching and also the reason that I like it. And, you know, I’ve enjoyed my teammates. Like I like being part of something that’s like bigger than myself, that you put a screen in between you and someone else. Covid’s probably a great example of like all these random plastic things and areas. It’s it just is not as I don’t know. It’s not as easy to relate to someone when you have that barrier between you. Yeah, I’ve certainly found that as well where it’s the and I found

that over the last 18 months when ran very few face to face clinics when we weren’t able to and when I could finally get back in person to the to the half day clinics that we do here. It’s like, oh, my God, this is I feel like I can come up with new ideas. I feel like I know how to coach again because doing that for yeah, for 18 months, I’ve really found it hard to look. I could still coach and I think I was still able to help people with it. But yeah, it’s just there’s something about doing it at a pool with other people that makes a big difference. And like I some of the best relationships or best friendships that I’ve developed have been through through swimming because you go through some tough sessions together, especially as like an age group squad where you might be swimming eight, nine, 10 times a week. You develop some really strong friendships and bonds that way. And then I think of the camps that that we’ve run in the past

where we’ve had up to twenty, twenty two adults at a time in a week long camp over in Thailand and Hawaii and and also up in Queensland here where it’s like, yeah, it’s just it’s such a great experience. And you yeah. And I’m friends with people who came to our first camp about six or seven years ago in in Thailand and continue to being contact with them with them today. And it’s yeah, it’s it’s an important part of coaching and like the technical side, like knowing knowing your craft, very important. But I think the relationship side is probably more important because if they don’t trust you, if they don’t like you, then they’re probably not going to listen. And then secondly, it’s well, how do you? How do you convey those things that you know? And how do you get someone to actually take action on them and implement them? So the technical side of things is one small component. Yeah, no, totally. I agree.

And I, you know, I think like we even kind of touched on this before, too. Like I used to think that I had like kind of proved myself on deck, you know, being a young coach, I think there’s a lot of like, well, I want to stand up and be able to be respected around all these other coaches. You had a female dynamic into that, too. And then, you know, also swimming at an elite level, it’s like, well, you kind of have this.

I don’t know if it’s like it’s like a kind of facade. That’s not the right word, but you have this thought that you really know everything and you know how to do everything. And so like combine all those things together when I was first coaching, you know, I was like, I was totally all about like trying to get the knowledge out of my head and, you know, put the numbers, you know, name, drop, like whatever it was. And it’s like some people don’t care about any of that. I mean, some people do. But like the girl that I coached today, who came into town

to do like one on one lesson with me, you know, she’s like, who’s that Olympian from like 1996? Like she doesn’t care, you know, she just wants to know like whatever that I’m talking about, like how does that actually apply to her?

So, yeah, I definitely slowed down. I spend more time listening, you know, I genuinely have always cared about all my clients and swimmers that I work with. But it’s changed the dynamic. It’s not so much of me feeling like I need to deserve the space in the room, but like, no, I can take space. But it doesn’t necessarily mean I always need to be like talking about space. That’s so funny. I have in the past, I’ve done clinics and I’ve had junior swimmers there, might be 11, 12, 13. And I’ll reference, say, and Thorpe, I might reference Michael Phelps if I’m talking about a certain aspect of their stroke. And I’ll say some of these names. And to me, it’s like, of course, I know who they are, but these kids have got no idea, some of them, no idea who Michael Phelps is. And he’s like, he’s still fairly recent, but not recent enough for these kids to know who he is. And it’s like, all right, well, there you go.

Like, yeah, they couldn’t care less who I competed with or anything like that. So it really is like, it’s, can you help them? And if you can, then, you know, that’s, that’s the main thing they probably care about is can you make them, can you make them better, not, not what, how fast you can swim, not, not who you know, but that’s right. As a coach starting out, I think because you perhaps lack the runs on the board as a, as a coach and you’re still figuring out, you try and sometimes you rely on, rely on that stuff to try and give you the credibility that only comes with time spent as a coach. Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree. It’s kind of funny. I was around one of my, he’s a mentor of mine, but I would say more of like an old school coach, like the, you know, the technology is an annoyance to him versus like a, you know, like an advantage. And when I was first trying to tell me all the stuff I was doing online, like I’m speaking

like lingo that it’s like, I’m sure you totally understand what he was like, you just need to go coach, like, go get on deck and coach. And I was like, I am coaching by the same time I’m like worried about my like SEO optimization of like my blah, blah, blah videos. And he’s like, just go coach. I was like, but at the same time, like, yes, but there’s this element of like this online kind of presence, you know, digital business that I wanted to have that I was like, I needed to learn all this other stuff that doesn’t go with coaching, but it helps facilitate the information flow from coaching. So yeah, I will always remember that because I was like, he is I literally walked away from my conversation, like he is so confused on like, what I’m actually trying to do. And I was like, there people are this confused. And like, my customers are probably confused. And so I took that as like more of a learning moment. I giggled. But I was like,

alright, I need to clean up a little bit. But this needs to make sense.

Yeah, it’s I’ve found over the last, the last couple of years that I’ve tried to make things as simple as as possible, because I’ve had YouTube comments on some of my videos that I’ve read on God, that is so confusing what you’re whatever you’re talking about there, like someone trying to explain this, I guess, maybe the same thing or something similar to what I’ve explained in that video. And I’m looking at I can’t I can’t interpret it. So it’s like, well, if I can’t interpret, I’ve been coaching for 15 years now, maybe 16 years, then, then like a swimmer who’s started been swimming for a year isn’t going to be able to do it. So I’ve tried to keep it as simple as as simple as possible. In terms of keeping it simple. So for your coaching is there any sorts of perhaps, principles or fundamentals that you’ll often start with when you’re coaching people or any, any of those things that come to mind with really no

matter who you’re working with, some things that you’re trying to get across to the swimmer that you’re working with? Yeah, I would say like, so the first thing that I always look at is kind of like the midsection of the body, I really am into body line. And how does the body, like sit in the water? Because I don’t think it really matters, like it does to be specific on what someone’s goals are and what their stroke is or the race that they’re looking for. But, you know, like you could be a breaststroke or any of you have a crap body line, then like, your breaststroke is not going to be fast. So I always work from the center, and then kind of go out to the, you know, hyper specifics. And like, you know, I saw a blog on your website that was like, the high elbow catch is really hard to get into. And it is. But like when you dive into that, like, more like, biomechanical side of swimming and the people that speak, I think hardcore technique all the time,

like, they always focus on those insane details, which like, not a lot of people can do. And it creates a lot of buzz, you know, there might be that one swimmer that’s super hyper mobile that has that ability to do all that. But then it’s like, well, what’s going on with their body or how is their body line situated? Can they even float? Like, that’s more important to me, I think you get like a bigger bank for your buck focusing layer and then seeing how to manipulate that and then how you manipulate it or if you get it any better than like working out to the, to the smaller arms and legs.

Yeah, it’s a quote that I heard. I can’t remember who I heard it from, but it’s the you should swim from the inside out, meaning it’s got to start from your core, and then it can move out to the extremities because without that core or body line, without without that in place, then, you know, you’re just going to be disconnected and things won’t work well together. So yeah, it’s got to start from the inside out. And the other sort of like the three words posture line balance, I think it’s Richard quick coach in the States used to always sort of talk about posture line and balance. And that it’s such a great starting point because with all of those in place, again, then you can work on the catch and those those other things. So is there is there any sort of any ways that you would typically go about helping people with their body line? Yeah, I mean, I kind of already gave maybe like a little too bit of that away. But some of the

first things I do is take someone, especially if you’re looking at like adult swimmers, I feel like a lot of times unless they have a swimming pass, they don’t, they miss a lot of those like fundamental components of a learn swim program like mowing bubbles, like floating on your back, floating on your stomach, like understanding how their body responds in the water. And so, you know, at first, I feel like always get a little bit of like grumbling when it’s like I’m dealing with a older athlete. And I’m like, can you float me like no? And it’s like, okay, but like you realize like that is essentially what you’re doing. And if you can’t float, then you’re going to be doing things in your strokes to like survive through that stroke, because, you know, subconsciously your body is like, well, I don’t want to drown. So like, even though that person fully knows how to swim, and probably can swim pretty well, like there’s

still that animalistic side of humans that it’s like, if you’re not comfortable in this water environment, then it’s not going to make for the smoothest of strokes. So I’ll do different drills that have to do with like, kind of air cycling, how you should breathe, how to be more comfortable with like a lower heart rate, trying to get people to float as well as they can, you know, just getting back to those like fundamental stages of a learned swim process. Because, you know, if someone learns how to swim through the internet, a lot of times that’s not really involved in adult swimming videos. I don’t know if that’s something you have specific to your videos. I don’t want to say it like concretely, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of that with people that are like, oh, I just bought this video set and taught me how to swim. I’m like, that’s amazing that you learned how to swim from a video set. But let’s take now what you

learned and kind of refine it a little bit. Yeah, we, I mean, I, I normally work with people who can swim, and we’ve just finished filming like a beginner beginner freestyle course that starts with the breathing and the balance and that sort of thing. For those that are like already attempting to swim, but might be struggling to swim more than 50 meters at a time, which I get quite a few people who, you know, who contact me, who are struggling to get past that 50. So I thought, oh, I sort of need something there to be able to help them, help them do it. So it’s, yeah, but I completely agree. Like it’s, I have had a lot of people who have learned basically just, they sometimes learned to swim as a kid or just learned to survive as a kid. And then they’ll take up swimming for triathlon or for fitness. And they will, yeah, and they’ve, they’ve figured it out through just going to the pool, watching some videos. And it’s, it’s

amazing if they, if they do that through, through the internet, as you said, so I think it’s, yeah, but if you can get some in-person instruction, it can certainly help if you are learning. But there’s just not much around. I don’t know about what it’s like over there, but in terms of adults learn to swim, very few places offer that. I just, yeah, it’s pretty rare. Oh, totally. And I do agree with that over here. There’s a, there’s a local coach in town that’s very much in like the master’s sector. And he actually does a really good job, but comparatively to, you know, I was in Florida, I lived in Nashville, Tennessee. I was also out in Colorado.

It is a dime a dozen to find someone who’s really in that specific field and likes it. Because I do think, you know, it’s hard to coach age groupers for an array of reasons. It’s also hard to coach adults for an array of reasons. So like it’s just a certain personality type that fits in there, you know, that enjoys it and wants to get after it because there’s, there’s a lot of opportunity there too. So I, I’ve always enjoyed working with adults. As you said, kind of in the intro, I don’t specifically just work with them. But it is, it’s a different animal than dealing with like a 12 year old.

And with the, the body line and finding the balance, is there, like I had a swim and contact me last week it was, and she was having trouble with her breathing about a month ago. And she listened to one of the podcasts we did. It was with the someone who does some some breath work and that kind of thing. And she sent me an email. She said, I realized that most of the issue, the big issue that I had with my breathing was actually was just mental. I was, I think she was in that, it’s like that fight or flight mode and was just sort of panicked and a bit fearful in the water. And when she realized that for her it was mostly mental that she was able to relax and then, and, and then be a lot more comfortable in the water. So is there, is there any sort of common common things you will see with with the adults that you work with who are in that more early phase of their learning? Yeah, definitely. I think one of the biggest things kind of like

with what you’re describing is people will hold their breath. Usually they get in and they’re nervous and then they’re going to hold their breath, which, you know, is good because as you’re holding your breath, you’re using oxygen, but creating carbon dioxide. And so it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter what gas is in your lungs, like it’s going to make you more buoyant. But eventually over time, that’s going to become too much and you’re going to start panicking, you know, looking for that next breath of air. So the heart rate spikes. And so in order to get that like calming kind of, you know, Zen meditative, like, you know, when you’re just cruising, you’re like, Oh man, swimming is like, I’m just having a great day swimming like that kind of feel you don’t want to be in a panic mode. You want to be relaxed. And I didn’t really realize how much I liked working hard and how the working hard correlated to my heart rate and like hard breathing and then the

flow of the breathing because when I was swimming, you know, I was focused on pace and making these sets or pushing myself to a different way. But now that I’ve, you know, I still train, but I train in with CrossFit and some other things that it’s like some of the best times I’ve had pushing myself, I feel like we’re in the pool and my heart rate was like so high. But I was breathing so well that like I was able to get through something that I don’t think I could get through. If I wasn’t like a fish efficiently breathing and cycling out on that lactic acid and CO2.

Yeah, there’s something something to being at that fitness level where you can go through a session and you can sustain a quite a high intensity, but stay very relaxed and controlled with your breathing like it’s if you’re not fit with your swimming, you know, if you spend a few weeks out and it’s you know, it’s just not going to happen for you like muscular. That’s going to go first. But when you are at that fitness level, it’s like it is a it is a great feeling. And I I yeah, like I was I bought it when I was concept two rollers recently. I don’t know if you’ve seen those before. But yeah, so I because I hurt my knee early January, so I couldn’t run. And then I got got COVID. So I was out for a few weeks. I couldn’t push myself. And I was just like, I need some form of exercise where aerobically I can actually do some sort of work. And so I wrote in the past and and that was such a good like such a good workout that was fairly similar

to swim because again, you’ve got to control your breathing. I could just put the headphones in and just go for half an hour and still get that same satisfaction of having an aerobically demanding workout rather than just doing maybe some some weights here and there. So it’s yeah, for me that’s like if I can get that every day, if I can get that sort of intensity, then I’m I’m going to be a good person. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I like sometimes I’m like at CrossFit like today, this morning, we had a seven minute little AMRAP. So you’re supposed to go through all these exercises as many times as you could in seven minutes. And I remember when I first started CrossFit, I was like, seven minutes like, is that even really like considered a workout? But I mean, it is, it’s just like a completely different style of stimulus compared to like doubles and weights and like the swimming grind because the swimming grind is like, I mean, it’s just a

whole another level of ball game. It’s wild.

Yeah, that if you think of like even like a 90 minute workout where the main set might be might be 40 to 60 minutes with depending on type of workout with with a bit of rest in between like that’s a long workout is a really long workout like 15 minutes hard on the row and you’re probably done. And so to be able to do that for that long of a time, it’s no wonder you know, swimmers are so fit and that can cross over to to aerobically for their running, maybe their riding and those sorts of things as well. Yeah, totally. Do you work with a lot of triathletes as well? Like, how would you say the master’s and triathletes split is for you?

Yeah, I did a survey on YouTube. I think it was well, it was like 60% I think we’re triathletes. So I’d say, yeah, a fair majority of triathletes that I work with and I probably get about that sort of 60 40 split at at the clinics that we do. So and I find with the with the triathletes in particular, like the fitness wise, they’re all very, very fit. And so it’s it comes down to refining their stroke, getting them to perhaps relax a bit more and not try and force it. And I was talking to and who was I talking to? I was talking to a podcast guest earlier today who’s going to be coming on later to talk about sort of mental training. And he was he was talking about Lionel Sanders and his stop sucking at swimming series and how when Lionel first started with this series, he like, he would be fighting the water, he’d be trying his hardest to be muscling it. And then when he eventually just worked out how to to to relax and and

do that. It’s that’s when he started to turn around. And like for us as coaches, it’s like, well, it’s no surprise, but it’s just such a different approach to the running and the writing I find. Yeah. Yeah, no totally. And you may try athletes that talk about the training were like, I’ve done a half Ironman. But and I’ve always said I wanted to do a full. So at some point in my life, I, you know, I want to commit to all the training that is required to to do that well. But man, yeah, that is that is an animal that full Ironman training that is it’s a lot. Yeah, it’s a huge amount, a huge commitment. I’ve done one in I was a while ago, six, I think six years ago was when I did it. And I love the training for it. Like the right the race was great. But I love the training. I loved how fit I was. I think I was down to like I was I think I was 78 kilos at my fittest. And like now I’m about 84, 85 and I’m reasonably fit. But I was like, oh my God, it’s

like, yeah, it’s been a long time since I’ve been down at that weight and and that fit. So it’s yeah, it’s a good like I get the addiction. I understand the addiction for for that sport and that kind of training because yeah, you just feel like such a such a beast aerobically that, you know, there’s not much that can really tie you out when you’re doing that kind of work and perhaps 12 to 15 hours of training when you’re training for a full Ironman. So it’s 15 hours a week. Oh man, yeah. Now I I started training. I actually wanted to do the one that’s in my hometown and then COVID hit. So they canceled it and then actually Ironman, I guess was like, well, I don’t think we want to bring it back to Lowell. So I was like, oh, well, I started training for like three weeks. And then I was like, I guess I’m not doing this Ironman. So eventually I want to find one and do it. I just I was so happy when I crossed the finish line for my half Ironman

because I had just recently retired. So I wouldn’t say that I was the smartest with training, especially with like the running part of it. Because I don’t really have much of a running background. Like I played basketball and soccer and some other things. But yeah, after I finished what was the longest run I’ve ever done at the end of that half Ironman, I was like, oh, my gosh, never again was my immediate response. And then you get that high of like, wow, I just did something, a barrier I never thought I could push pass and do. And so I was like, I’m signing up for a full Ironman, like right now when it was like, calm down, literally calm down. It’s okay. Yeah, the first thing I said to my wife when I crossed the line after the full was never let me do that again. Because I knew I’d get I like I just that was how hard it was at the time. And I just wanted her to make sure that she never let me into another one again because I because I would

forget about it. It’s probably like having a baby. You just forget the pain. So um, yeah, very, very difficult. But um, yeah, I think once my kids are a bit older, I’ll probably probably get back into it. I think because it’s, yeah, it’s just it’s just it’s fun. And like even though it’s like 12 to 15 hours a week, and I probably do about probably like five hours a week of training at the moment, just in a bit of swimming and rowing and running. I think like you just make the time you fit it in no matter how busy you are. And there’s people who are working a lot longer than I am. And then they’re still able to fit it in. So it’s I like it. I think I liked being that that productive and that that busy and getting it at all done because you just you just make it work. And yeah, I’m sort of I think I’m ready for something something again to to train hard for have a have a big goal in mind because it’s I mean for most people it’s been probably

two years where they haven’t really had that. And for me, it’s been probably like probably four years since since a big big event. So I think I’m ready for something. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally get that. I think when I have something more on my mind, it’s like I enjoy fitness and joy being active. And I think swimming is a great sport because it’s a lifelong sport. You can, you know, do it until you’re either they have 100 and over age group or master swimming. So it’s that’s enticing. But at the same time. Yeah, I it’s better when I’m like, I’m going to this meet or I’m doing this for my own internal motivation to be on point.

One of the I think the best ways to get that motivation is to just just compete like on the on the weekend I raced it just a competition just in the pool did 200, 400 free in a couple of fifties and been a long time since I’ve done some of those events and a long time since I’ve sort of raced them well. And I like saw my times and I was just like, geez, that is that was pathetic. That was like I could be a lot faster than that. But like straight away the next session after after racing, I’m just like a bit more I’m more motivated. I sort of I realized where I could find improvement in in those events. And so to me, I’m thinking I’m just thinking I should probably just race a little bit more like I like I was. And then that sort of motivation will will come as well, because like I I don’t like not being good at something that I would traditionally be good at. And it sort of hurts the ego a little bit. And I think over the over the last

probably 10 years, I don’t care about my results as much as I certainly did when I was a teenager and competing at a much higher level. But I think deep down there’s something there I still do care about those results at least a little bit. And so, yeah, I think it’s it’s good to have that that fire and and not let that die down or die out. You know, it’s yeah, there’s still that competitive fire there. I just need to wake it up a bit more. Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. I totally agree.

And with the so with the kids that you’re coaching, you mentioned that they were sort of six to 11 and then I think like 11 to sort of 14. So what are some of those like really what are some of those fundamental skills that you’d like those from us to to develop early on and that you see that translating down the track as they get older. So and I know we’re talking about kids here, but I mean there’s a crossover to people who are learning how to swim as adults as well, because as you mentioned, yeah, it’s the same thing. It’s still swimming and and sometimes the adults don’t get taught these more more fundamental things. So you talked about body line. What’s the next thing? Yeah, I think, you know, for pool swimming, kind of shaping up on, you know, starts and turns is important. Like you’re you’re really learning like the technique of proper swimming. But when you’re going through, you know, an age group program, the body is also changing quite

substantially. So it’s kind of like, I’ll say it as some of my swimmers, it’s like we put you on a path and we want to try to keep you on this path and things are going to happen that are going to like nudge you away. Like maybe you have like a crazy growth spurt or if you’re a female, you’ll go through puberty and that’s going to change how you swim. And so the goal is to still try to get you to swim as efficiently as possible for you. But it’s like kind of learning how to work with all these body changes as they’re flowing through an age group program. So by the time that they’re, you know, for females will be more like in high school, growing into their body, which will be their body for a long time. And then guys completely different, like they’ll have, you know, a boy in high school that weighs maybe like 160 pounds and then he’ll go off to college and start strength training and come back at like 185. So it’s just like how well

can we direct this path so that way you can be that kid in college. You know, you have the ability to swim for that long because you’ve got a great base and you know what you need to do. And then it’s just a matter of learning how to execute that,

you know, like no matter what age you are. So I feel like I spent a lot of time on those smaller details, making sure that like the transitions are great, making sure the start looks good, like learning how to jump and take that general athlete athleticism and transfer it into the pool. So kids that are swimmers are not feeling like they’re just like swimmers and baby giraffes running around. They’re actually athletes. And yeah, it’s a challenge for sure. I feel like that’s changed a lot since when I was since when I was now swimming as a junior, whereas you like you look at the likes of Caleb Dressel and I mean anyone who’s sort of competing at the Olympics is there athletically. They are very, very good. And you see it with with Caleb Dressel where his starts and his turns are above anyone else at the moment. And yes, that athleticism and ability to get to to move out of the water and that explosiveness through through the jumping

motions and others where it’s like it’s it’s incredible. And and you see, you do see it now where there are swimmers who are perhaps not specializing as swimmers in eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years of age, they might be doing a lot of other sports and then they’ll start to specialize in their later teen years. And for the most part, that works really well because then they get those those other skills and that they learn how to move their body and that body awareness. And that helps a lot down the track. And if they stick with the sport, you know, that your peaks not until like early twenties for females, late twenties for males in swimming. And if you stick around, you can generally do do pretty well. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely do feel like, you know, stuff that I’ve been kind of thinking about recently with our kids is like, what age do you start instilling? Like, how do you descend properly? You know, because like you

have all these terms that you and I could say and it’s like, oh, descending means you get faster. But it’s like teaching someone how to descend and then also understanding like the speed levels they have in them, you know, like is level 10 really level 10 or is your level 10 like your level seven? And like when you’re dealing with younger swimmers, you know, nine, 10 year olds will get out of a race and be like, I didn’t go best time. They’re, you know, they’re not even breathing hard. And so it’s like they don’t necessarily understand like where their ceiling truly is. And so that educational piece, I definitely could see that transfer over with adults as well, like knowing maybe adults are a little bit more mental, you know, about why I think my ceilings here, so therefore it should be, but it’s like, well, now you’re showing me that your ability level is a lot higher than the output you just did. So it’s like, how do we get

your brain to give you that moment to shine, you know, more with an adult and then for a swimmer, maybe a younger swimmer, it’s like the educational piece of like you have a lot more to give than you really understand like you should be exhausted when you get out of the pool. And if you’re talking to me immediately, you’re most likely not exhausted. Yeah, it’s exactly, exactly right. And do you have you got some thoughts around how to how to teach that in your swimmers? Yeah, so like with our highest level age group right now, we were really struggling with our kids not to just descend but not go like slow, slow, slow, fast, like descending one through four. So it was like, all right, so how do we translate this to them? So it’s like 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% didn’t work either. And so then we started putting like forcing it by intervals, which you can do and that works to an extent. But like, what if you don’t want to tighten the interval?

Like, what if you want to give, you know, the rest? So what’s worked with this group, which may not be what works for everybody is we just did numbers like one through five. And so it’s kind of like, you know, RPE and such just like, OK, number one is slow. Cool, they get it. Number two is like a little bit faster than slow. And like number three should be hard and then four is fast and then five is all out. So it’s helped take away that like one, one, one, five situation that was happening with the sending and make it like two, three, four, five or one, two, three, four. So yeah, it was kind of it felt like we went backwards to go forwards, but it worked. So that’s all we were really pleased with. Yeah, it’s it’s such an important skill to be able to yeah, push yourself first of all. And I think like we we tend to get a bit we tend to get a little bit lazier or a bit a bit softer when we when we get older traditionally, like it’s

and maybe I’m speaking from personal experience. Like I find it’s probably more of a and an effort to really like I would rarely max out like I did when I was a teenager. And maybe maybe that’s just your capacity as a teenager to do that. And I guess I was doing more. But yeah, but when you when you do and when you find that that level of intensity where you just like, oh my God, that was like, I’m really, I’m really pleased with myself that I actually went there. And you know, I’m completely exhausted. Like it’s a good it’s a good feeling. And yeah, I think a well-designed set and it explained well can can do that. And I think it’s some of the we used to do some sets in in our how we camps over in Thailand where we would get them to like this one we would always do was was eight fifties. Let’s see dive max effort walk backs. And we’d have we’d have some swimmers you could they’d like basically save themselves. They might be hitting 40

for the first six or seven. And the last one would be like a thirty three. And it’s like, well, hang on a minute. Like you would definitely not going max in those earlier ones. And then you’d have the swimmers who they might have started at like a thirty one and then holding it, holding it. And then they’ve blown up and they’ve blown out to maybe a thirty three towards towards the end. It’s like, yes, that’s like that. You’ve done the set, the set really well. So that’s that’s one I think that can expose whether or not they’re they’re saving themselves. And yeah, you can say with by putting that effort or not. Yeah, yeah, no, no, definitely. And it’s it is such a good feeling when you know that you’ve just done something and you’re just like that complete exhaustion. Like, I don’t know, just realizing I think swimming any sport I think can teach you a lot about life. But then swimming, you know, specifically in this instance,

like teaches you about like, OK, you have this ability to withstand some really hard things. And like those things are bigger than even what you understand, you know, like it’s just it’s it does break down a lot of like mental barriers, I think, for the person training.

And thinking of your your coaching like over the next five years, 10 years, what is it that you that you almost looking forwards to? What is it that you would like to get out of people as a coach? Because I know like you do from what I can see, like you do quite a lot. You’re doing the squad coaching. You’re doing all of the clinics and stuff like that with swim like a fish. So there’s a lot that you’re doing within the sport. What is it that, you know, you’d really like to.

Yeah, be doing and most excited about for the next sort of five, ten years. Can you see where that’s going? Yeah, yeah, I feel like so as much as I love coaching,

you know, like I love the club team and stuff that I have here. I really enjoy like the educational space for coaches and swimmers. And so like I will always still coach, you know, run clinics and camps and all that stuff. But I really enjoy kind of like getting into the weeds and like writing a really good blog or dissecting someone’s training philosophy, like kind of trying to pull it out of them. So that way you can share it with others. And so like my biggest goal is to help keep the swimming world continuing to elevate. Like what I want to do is just to keep helping swimmers get faster. And so this just keeps helping the sport get faster. And so but the way that I have most enjoyed doing that is through being kind of like an educational resource. And so I think as we’re moving forward, I want to keep building on that component of our business. And then at the same time, dive more into like the analytics

behind certain things, because a lot of coaches are really good with numbers, you know, splits, tempos, stroke rates, stroke counts, all that stuff. You know, great coaches can pretty much regurgitate. And so it’s like, well, how do you take the trends then to prove that sport is progressing or this person is progressing to help people coach better? So that way their swimmers get faster. Because I find a lot of enjoyment not necessarily being like the coach is like, hey, I created that kid. It’s more of like, hey, I was a part of that kid’s journey.

And yeah, so that’s my goal. And then through the avenues that we do that would be

different partnerships, maybe working with some different countries under some different NGBs, like helping just expand that knowledge base for areas like the US is so dominant, but really not that much anymore. Like y’all are at our heels, like, you know, we need to keep evolving because everybody else’s.

Yeah. Yeah, I love it. It’s I’ve really got enjoyment from having when I sort of sat down and thought about and written about, like, I guess my thoughts on different parts of the stroke or technique and just like when I feel like I’ve been able to come up with an original thought or concept and a way to perhaps coach something that I might have struggled to get someone to do or to implement into their their training or their stroke. I like coming up with ideas and trying to evolve

the way that I coach and then perhaps a different ways for swimmers to improve. That’s that’s what I’ve really enjoyed. And then I like the creative part of like making a video for YouTube or Instagram, doing a podcast like this. Like it’s yeah, I really enjoy that that creative side of it, maybe similar to what you were were talking about there. And it’s yeah. And you can you can really impact a lot more people that way as well when it’s through something like like this or through video or a blog. And like and I don’t want to not be coaching because it’s that that face to face that we were talking about earlier. It’s the face to face that really I get a big kick out of that. I I enjoy it and you can really have a big impact when you do have that face to face contact with people. But it’s also yeah, the time to just sit and think and yeah, come up with new ideas, I think is is important. And yeah, and when I feel like I haven’t done that for a while,

it’s like there’s something in the back of my mind that says like just really like make it fresh, do something new and you have to sit down and have a think about what you’re doing and where you can improve what it is because what it is you’re doing. Because yeah, there’s something in the back of my mind that sort of gnaws at me when I haven’t done that for a while. Yeah, I completely get it. And like the swimming, you know, coaching grind is so intense. And it’s like, you know, we’re in the kind of the heat of the season right now where we’re getting ready for a championship meets. We have a last chance meet this weekend. Like, you know, everything feels like very

at a higher intensity than what it is normally. So like if I don’t take space or have space like in my schedule to have a few hours where I can like sit in front of my computer and allow that creativity to come out. It’s really hard for me because I’m always like, oh, I’m on a time cruncher. I got to be at the pool at two o’clock or I’m going up to the staff meeting here. Like I got to go on the phone call with this person that it like limits my ability, or at least it feels like to be creative. So like, I’ve been really enjoying weekends where I’ve been in town. In Sundays, I don’t have any lessons because I’ll, you know, I’ll think of something or maybe I have thought of something and I’ve written it down and I’m like, all right, let’s expand upon that. Like, what do you actually think about this and how do you think it would help and what’s the easiest way to convey it and just allows that creative process to flow and, you know, it’s interesting

because it’s like, I think it’s a part of most jobs, but at the same time, like, you know, your job, no matter what it is, has a lot of, you know, actionable deliverables. And sometimes you don’t necessarily get to be creative on how you deliver those. But in a space like you and I are sitting in, like, it’s fun to find a YouTube video or make one that’s like, dang, that underwater video looks so cool right now. Like you’re geeking out about your own video, you know, before you even put it up. And a lot of times it’s actually what I do. I’m like, oh, it’s so sick. Like, I’m like, I’m so excited for people to see it. And then some people might be like, that’s so cool, too. And then other people are like, no. And I was like, well, whatever, I still think it’s cool. You know, like it’s just my love of swimming totally comes out.

Yeah, totally. So it’s, I think that’s a good place to end it there. So Abby, I want to thanks for, thank you for being on the podcast. And for those listening, where’s the best place to find you to see those videos that you’re making and in the blog post that you’re talking about? Yeah, yeah. So if anybody I’m never connected with, I’d love to connect with you. We’ve got a great website. It’s just it’s swim like a fish dot org. And then probably the best social outlet for us is my Instagram page. So my username is at and then T H E a fish just as my name. And then the number one. And you do some you do some great videos of, yeah, I really enjoyed the the way that you shoot them. And then, obviously, the the lessons behind it as well, the teaching that you’re doing. So, yeah, I think that’s that’s great. And so if you are listening, yeah, go and check out Abby’s Instagram there. It’s it’s really good. So and we’ll put that in our show notes as well, so people can find it.

So Abby, thanks again for being on the podcast. And I’d love to have your back on again soon, too. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. 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 Start In The Middle with Abbie Fish appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

I was recently a guest on Kieser’s Healthy to 100 podcasts to talk about exciting topics regarding training, swimming equipment, and much more. I hope you enjoy it!

01:59 Swimming Equipment Must-Haves

Form Goggles

On this episode, I was recently a guest on the Keyser podcast, and they have a podcast called Healthy to 100. And I was a guest on there for two episodes, and I thought it’d be great to be able to just publish this on our own podcast, because I think a lot of this information you’ll really enjoy. It’s pretty much going back to basics with freestyle, with swimming, and we look at what matters, what’s worth knowing, what’s worth doing when it comes to freestyle. So I hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome back, everybody, to Healthy to 100 for another episode. We’re joined again by swimming coach Brenton Ford. We’ve recorded these two podcasts directly after each other. We just had to have a five minute gap so I could book into one of Brenton’s swimming clinics

because I’ve realized my technique’s terrible. And the only way that I’m ever going to beat all of my mates is by getting better techniques. So I look forward to a video analysis, Brenton. Can’t wait. Well, that’s probably one of the main motivations of people who come and see me, is they want to beat their mates or its parents who their kids are starting to get faster than them and they want to try and delay that process a little bit longer. So I understand the motivation. Another motivation, I bet, and this is a motivation for so many people who come to Keyser, is whatever activity they’re doing, they want to be doing it for the next 20 years or 30 years. And it doesn’t matter if they’re 40 or 50 or 60. So what I want to chat about in the next half hour is what are the things that definitely can facilitate performance today? Absolutely, important. But also that can facilitate people participating in this sport that you love and I love

for the next 20 plus years. So I’ve got a list of things that I want to take through. First thing I want to ask you about is equipment, which is probably a kind of a relatively small list for swimming compared to when I’m chatting to a golf pro, but my wetsuits compared to one paces, budgie smugglers for men and one paces for women,

goggles, cap, stuff like that. What’s important for swimming is when it comes to equipment? Yeah, so everyone’s going to need goggles and a couple of tips with goggles. It’s certainly personal preference and it’s worth just trying a couple on in whichever shop you do go to. But if you are swimming outdoors, you’re probably going to want some tinted goggles to make sure that you’re not getting the sun directly in your eyes or if you are, then the tinted goggles will just allow you to be able to see. So tinted goggles is one, if you are going open water, you probably want slightly bigger lenses than some of the ones that are designed for the pool. So there’s just some main ones there that can help people get started. Swimming cap, that’s optional. If you do have long hair, you’re probably going to want to get one because if your hair’s going all over the place, it’s a bit more drag and it can be a little bit of a nuisance.

But it’s certainly not required, but it can just help keep your hair in place. I think it’s also relevant like goggles and caps, although it sounds silly, comfort is a big reason that people continue doing the sport. And I am a bit of a wimp. And so when it gets anywhere near winter in Bondi, I throw the swimming cap on straight away because it just stops me getting that little bit of a head freeze and I can continue doing the open water swim and I really enjoy it. Whereas if I forget the cap on my ears of Carl and I’m like a bit of an ice cream headache and I just, it’s not as enjoyable. So good goggles that don’t leak, big lenses if you’re in the open water cap, if it’s a little bit cold, I think that seems to make a bit of difference people’s comfort. Yeah, totally. And I’m the same. If I am swimming in the open water, I’ll sometimes double cap it. I’ll put two caps on and I’m down here in Victoria, so it’s a little bit cooler.

But yeah, that sort of comfort certainly helps. And another comfort factor there is earplugs. If you don’t, if you have water that gets stuck in your ears and it’s annoying, just getting some earplugs, there’s a lot of different ones out there. I like the, I use Zogs, that’s, I don’t know, like just Zogs earplugs, I think they only make one kind, but I’ve found them to be pretty good. And you can also get custom ones and stuff if you are swimming on a more regular basis. But even that alone can stop people getting in the water. And I sit with my young kid, he’s like, he will not put his hand under the water because he gets water in his ears. So we don’t change too much as adults either sometimes. But earplugs are a one. And then with wet suit or bathers and that sort of thing, if you are going in the open water, most places you’ll be, it will get cold over winter. And just having a wet suit will make it so much more enjoyable

to be in there for people. And what I normally say in terms of what wet suits you should get, for most brands, I would normally steer clear of like the base level one and just maybe go like one model up or two models up. It might cost you another $100 or $200 but usually there’s a little bit more slightly thinner material through the shoulders. And that can make it a lot easier to swim. So with a lot of brands, those base models, they’re fine and they can be all right but it is a little bit harder to move and you’ll probably fatigue a bit sooner through the shoulders. So that’s normally my advice for people when they are getting one, is you want that comfort through the shoulders. It’s really good advice. We did one of these podcasts on surfing and Richie Wallace who looks after the RipKel Pro Richie talked about the importance of investing a bit of money in a good wet suit surfing and it’s not only temperature

but what Brenton was referring to there is the quality of the neoprene or the amount of flexibility in neoprene will dictate how much resistance you’ve got to moving your shoulder. So if you put on a surfing wetsuit circa 1980 there wasn’t a heap of flexibility in there and you felt like you’re working against resistance bands. It might be a good workout for you the whole time but won’t be as much fun. Whereas I roll around in a two times you wet suit, not a nice plug for Luke O’Shea at two times you but the neoprene in those now and the elasticity in them is amazing, Rock. They just don’t restrict your shoulder movement at all. Yeah, and the technology and the quality certainly come a long way and if it’s something that you love to do and I sort of equate this with like swimming for me, swimming and surfing they’re probably my two biggest passions and for something that you really enjoy I think just spend the money.

Like I bought a new surfing wetsuit six months ago because it’s getting pretty cold in winter. Got the top of the line Rip Curl one and I’m just so glad I did. I’m like, it’s another 200 bucks on what I might have got but it’s probably gonna last longer. It’s gonna be much more comfortable and I’m gonna enjoy it. So I think spending money on things that you enjoy it’s worth doing. So yeah, if that’s swimming, get yourself a good wetsuit. Yeah, I think it’s a good point. Something that I’ve spoken to a few patients about one of my patients is a swim teacher up here has run a swim school in Terry Hills for many years and Anne’s a big advocate of the shorts. So it’s not that cold up here in Sydney but getting yourself a pair of particularly for blokes who tend to drag their feet a little bit and kind of acts like anchors in the water. Can you explain everyone, or I’m wondering your thoughts on it and if you could explain to people

why that might be beneficial? Yeah, so the buoyancy shorts that you’re talking about or float pants as people will call them, they’re these swim shorts that’ll just help pop your hips and your legs up. And it’s very similar to having a wetsuit on but it’s much easier to put on and you can wear it at the pool without overheating. It makes a huge difference to your body position. And I think the coach that I was when I first started as a traditional swim coach would have said, it’s cheating, take those off. But the thing, and what I’ve come to learn is that if you are an adult and you’re enjoying your swimming and the float pants or the buoyancy shorts make you enjoy your swimming a whole lot more and it gets you to the pool and gets you actually doing the workout rather than going, I don’t really enjoy my swimming maybe I won’t go. Wear the shorts, it can be so much more enjoyable for people because it just takes care of such a big factor

which is that body position and that balance there. And yeah, I’ve got nothing against it. And okay, yeah, maybe it’s cheating compared to not having them, but who cares? I’ve got a lot of the guys that I swim with in the squad will wear them and yeah, go for it, yeah. It’s just like, we’re wearing floaties for a kid that can’t swim, it’s like, at least they’re in there and they can do it rather than sitting on the sidelines. It’s, yeah, just do it. I was gonna share the story. I rehabbed a patient after a shoulder injury and he loved swimming, had an injury shoulder. Swimming had done another way. Rehabbed his shoulder and he actually wasn’t gonna get back into swimming. He was really worried about it and he was a bit like, wow, made my swimming career is over. And his son recommended that he get a pair of the shorts and lo and behold, that was just the kick that he needed. He went back, his body position was good.

He had lost a lot of fitness because he after shoulder surgery been off for six months but he got back into it and that was the catalyst. I honestly think that was probably the difference between him going back to swimming and doing it three times a week down at Balmoral and maybe never going back. So I’m all about participation and people doing it for as long as they possibly can and that guys swimming career is continuing. So I’m big fan of the shorts. Yeah, it’s such a good story and it’s not an uncommon one I think with a lot of people. It just makes their swimming so much more enjoyable and you’ll certainly get coaches who’ll say like, what are you wearing those for? They’re probably a more old school sort of coaches and but yeah, it’s like, who cares? You know, who cares what someone else is doing? If they enjoy it more and it keeps them going absolutely use them. Yeah, Brendan. So we’ve covered on equipment.

Very interesting training. So you mentioned before that when you were swimming at your most elite level, you’re doing eight or nine sessions a week in the pool. You then said that you’re doing about three or four now. The people that you work with or kind of the average every day swim up what’s your thoughts on how often they should try? Yeah, whatever they can do is good but my usual rule of thumb for most people is two, you can typically maintain what you’ve got and three is a good number to be able to improve what you’re doing. Obviously everyone’s different but that’s what I’d sort of go with as a rule for most people, especially those that would come to our clinics. It would be, yeah, you can definitely get better with two but you’ll notice a difference with three. So I think three is kind of the minimum to really see improvement. Four is great as well but yeah, three is what I’d try to aim for for most people

because with swimming it’s just that feel for the water that you lose quite quickly and you can develop that feel for the water a lot better with that consistency of three. And how long are those sessions where we, there would need to be a minimum of 20 minutes. I would have thought in the pool to even start to make a difference but as a guideline about how long are you recommending? Yeah, I’d be thinking in the pool like a minimum of probably 45 minutes is what you’d wanna aim for is a minimum. If you’re going in the open water you’re gonna be swimming that whole time usually you might have a stop here at a boy or at a post but you’re swimming for a longer period of time there with probably less rest if you’re going than if you’re going to the pool. So you’d probably wanna go a minimum of 30 minutes if you’re in the ocean but I’d usually say about 45 minutes to an hour is quite a good timeframe and the squad are pretty good consumers

they’re all adults we’d normally go an hour, 15 to an hour and a half but yeah, I think 45 to 60 is kind of a good one to aim for. And so we’re doing three sessions a week.

I’m a runner as well and I would normally look at my running like being one long running session, one running session that’s a bit shorter and then one that’s an interval session. How does that apply to swimming? Yeah, pretty similar approach is what I’d normally give people. So if you did have three sessions a week I’d normally be looking to do one as a longer swim maybe slightly longer intervals like some 400s or 300s with a little bit less rest but that would be your more aerobic based session give you that just that base fitness. The second one would usually be a bit of a threshold session where we’re looking to do some intervals that are closer to like your 1.5K sort of race pace. So up around that sort of pace you might, you’re gonna vary it a bit. Something that I think people probably don’t do enough of at least who haven’t learned to swim as a kid is most people do all their session at the same speed.

And so what we wanna ideally do is just mix up the pace a bit and get them being able to change gears when they’re swimming. Some simple things like that would be you might do four 100s and you might just get a little bit quicker each one. So we’d call it like 70% on the first one then 75, 80 and 85% just perceived effort for those four 100s and just doing different sets like that where they’re actually changing their speed. And if you haven’t done that before you’ll probably find it really hard to actually have that gradual improvement over time. You might go the first one, okay the next one a little bit quicker and the last two will be slower because you’ve just burned all your candles. So yeah, take some practice but that’s something that’s really important. So that’s our threshold one. And then the other one we’d normally do is like a speed session with some shorter sprints of 25s and 50s at a higher effort.

And that’s where we can usually mix in a bit more technique work as well with that session. It’s so interesting to hear you say that because I think, you know talking about what principles we can take from elite sport and bring it down to the everyday swimmer or the everyday athletes. So many sports people who are participating in it as weekend warriors they just do it the same each time. You know, I go for a 5k run at the same speed three times a week or you know, I go for a bike ride and I just go at the same perceived effort. And it’s really important for people to understand that really your body will only ever respond to stress. So it needs to be stressed a little bit and then it’s going to respond. There are different ways that you can do it. You can do it through how long you go or how frequent you’re training or your intensity. But as a running principle, we use an 80-20 principle where about 80% of your running

should be relatively low intensity and 20% should be at a higher intensity. Does that kind of apply to swimming as well, Brenton? Yeah, you’d have it fairly similar. You probably have a slightly more at a higher intensity. I think partly because running is a little bit more stress on the body with the impact of it but pretty similar sort of principle. And you’ll get that with at an elite level as well.

They’ll have anywhere between like two to four like an elite level somewhat, two to four key sessions during the week and they might be doing 10 sessions overall. And yeah, those two to four where they’re gonna be working pretty hard and the rest would be lower intensity and lower effort. That’s such good numbers. So two to four key sessions or intensity sessions a week out of 10. So you just do the numbers for everyone listening, 20 to 40% of your sessions are done at a higher intensity and the other ones at less. And also the difference in speed between those higher intensity and lower intensity sessions. It’s relatively significant, isn’t that Brenton? It’s measurable. Yeah, and it’s interesting if you watch an elite level squad train they’re so tuned into what their pace is.

The interesting thing is like when they’re doing your harder efforts and let’s say you’re going like 80, 85% and 90% with that perceived effort. Some people think that between those like 80, 85 and 90 that it would be like for them, let’s say like 10 seconds faster per 100 from going from 80% to 85 to 90%. Things should be these massive differences with that part of it. But the thing is it’s like it’s much more minimal than that. So like what I’m getting at is that people think that when they’re like increasing the effort a little bit that they’ll have these radical speed changes but it’s like it might only be one or two seconds when you go from those sorts of numbers. But that said with your like if you’re going at just aerobic, let’s say you’re going one or two minutes for example at your aerobic pace then your anaerobic pace or when you’re going faster it’s not going to be one minute 30 for that 100. It’s probably going to be, I don’t know

like 145 to 150 somewhere around there maybe. So yeah, it’s like it’s certainly faster but we’re not looking for this like huge differences. You just up the intensity a little bit. Yeah, so do you use perceived exertion? I heard you say that before. Do you use that or do you use time? It just depends with who you’re working with. Like the squad that I swim with, I set the programs. Our Friday session, we’re going off like your PB plus three seconds or PB plus four seconds sort of thing. So we’re working from us with a set time but when we’re doing other sessions it’s more just off perceived effort when we’re doing like a threshold session. So it depends on the person and I quite like perceived effort because it kind of helps you tune into what you think you’re sort of doing and you can hopefully see that improvement but I think in swimming there’s something called critical swim speed CSS which is like a way to test roughly

what your 1500 meter sort of pace would be and you can look it up online. It’s like a 400 and a 200 time trial and that can give you your CSS pace and that’s a good number to sort of work from when you’re doing some sets. So you can work off something like that but because I don’t sort of run a squad anymore I just sort of swim with them. I’m not coaching squad. I just do our clinics and stuff. I just got off perceived effort most of the time with them. Yeah, it’s such a valuable tool. I think is underutilized by a lot of people. So what do you think some of the most common training mistakes are for swimmers? We covered the first one which was just not varying the pace enough and just having everything at one speed. Another one would be not breaking up your sessions

into intervals. So a lot of people when they start swimming it’s like they’re going out for the 5K run. There’s no difference in it. They’ll go and do 20 laps, one kilometer with no breaks and it’s just all done in one chunk and nothing wrong with that but you probably won’t improve much by just doing that. So you’ll see all good swimmers will have their sessions broken up into different intervals of hundreds and 200s and there’s resting between them. And people look at that and go but then I’d be stopping and I wouldn’t be getting as fit. But the thing about that is, well, okay, you probably can’t push as hard when you don’t get those arrests. And the thing with swimming is your technique will break down quite a bit as you’re going through that one kilometer continuous. So you’re much better off taking 10 seconds, 15 seconds or so after 100 or 200, stopping or resetting and going again because you’ll be able to maintain better technique.

And if you train better technique then you’re going to be able to hold a faster time as you swim because if your form breaks down your speed will slow down as well. So it’s a bit of a barrier that people have to actually breaking out their session with some rest. It’s a funny one. Like I come from a swimming background and so of course it’s what you do. You take some rest in between. But yeah, when people are new to it, they just, yeah, it goes against what they think they should be doing. Because they think, well, I’m not gonna get as fit because I have to stop there. You have such a big focus on technique. Don’t you, Brent? Like just listening to you talk there about the degradation of technique as you get a little bit tired. Well, I can’t think of any runner who would describe their running sessions like that but your focus is like constant repetition of the best technique possible. Something all noses on it.

Yeah, and it’s especially with swimming. If you watch the Olympics, like you can see that technique break down in the last, even like the last 15 meters of 100 freestyle as those swimmers that can hold their form for the last 15, that will typically the fastest. Yeah, you’ll see it like there’s… Well, probably I won’t, mate, to be honest. I’m probably just jumping up and down on the couch but you might see it. Yeah, and that’s what they train. So we wanna be able to hold the best technique without thinking about just training that as a habit. And the way we’ve gotta do that is do it in training. So as soon as you feel your form breaking down, yeah, it’s okay to push through it a little bit. You don’t wanna be training that bad technique because in the long run, yeah, while you might, your fitness might sort of be better short-term when you’re training that bad form, you just push through it, push through it.

Well, in the long run, you’ll be a lot quicker because you’re gonna train good form if you just like, take that little bit of a break. That’s such good advice and something that so many people will be able to apply myself included from tomorrow this afternoon if I can get out for a swim. And I imagine it kind of, I wanted to ask you about fins and drills and how if I just wanna get better at iron man or triathlon or an open water swim where I’m gonna swim freestyle, like why do I need to do some breaststroke and why do I need to do some backstroke and stuff like that? So is that, is the answer to that technique as well or if I jump the gun there? Yeah, I think mixing in other strokes, it’s just allows you to move in a different way. It gives some of those freestyle muscles a bit of a break and a bit of a rest. And especially with like freestyle, it’s obviously all on your front. And so when you do a bit of backstroke,

it can just open up the shoulders and just allow you to use those slightly different muscles. So I think it’s good to mix it up that way. And in terms of mixing in drills, anyone who’s watched any of my videos or podcasts that we do, you’ll probably get sick of me talking about doing drills. But when you’re looking to learn a skill, it can be hard to do it just by thinking about it. And so we wanna break down certain aspects of the stroke with drills and learn that aspect of it. That’s just a catch for example. So we practice that movement with a drill and then that’s gonna help us take that small component of it into the full stroke. So doing some drills in your warmup is so important if you wanna improve your technique. And people might think that or hear that and think, well, I’ve done drills before but they never really did anything. If you know what you’re focusing on with the drill and the purpose behind it,

you can really make some big improvements. But most people will just like hear a drill. Let’s say it’s single arm freestyle where you’re doing freestyle with one arm, that one’s by the side. You can do that drill all day but you can do it without thinking of any particular part of the stroke or anything that you’re trying to change. And it’s probably not gonna make any improvement if you don’t know what you’re focused on. So yeah, it’s a big part of what we try and do is just like explain why you’re doing the drill, what should you be getting right in it and how is that gonna translate to your full swim stroke? So yeah. I can give some why a mechanical basis to that. I mean, even your example of you wanna get a better freestyle so do a little bit of backstroke. You talked earlier on in our technique podcast about the need for to get some thoracic extension to be able to lift your chest up for certain parts of breathing in open water.

Well, I can tell you from a physio perspective that lifting your arm up above your head in backstroke is gonna facilitate you being able to get more thoracic extension. So it might be, you know, you’re doing backstroke not hopefully you never have to do backstroke in nine man because that’s usually an indication that you need some help from the lifestyles. But it will help as components of your freestyle like thoracic extension and then there’s that carry over there. So yeah, it does completely make sense. That’s it’s funny. I got an email yesterday, someone asking when I do like I do 25 of backstroke and then I go into freestyle that first lap after doing backstroke that first lap of freestyle is my fastest one. Why is that? I was like, I’m not really sure. So maybe you’ve answered that question for me. But I honestly think it is. I mean, one of the biggest common, one of the biggest problems that we see as physios

is people sitting down all the time and the world that we live in with phones and iPads and stuff like that is people lacking thoracic extension. They will roll their shoulders forwards. Their lungs will shrink a little bit. They won’t be able to expand down their diaphragm. I can give you a list of things that it does. Backstroke, this is why I love swimming for kids. One of many reasons. I think it’s good survival skill as well, but it just gets you out of that position, forces you to be as tall as possible, both broadens your shoulders and extends your spine. I don’t have a number on it, but I’m sure someone’s looked at it before about how much more volume you can get into your lungs in that position compared to if you’re, you know, you think about the opposite where you completely hunched and round shoulder. Just makes sense by mechanically. Yeah, and that breathing is such a key factor with swimming is a lot of swimmers who struggle with,

they feel breathless when they swim. One of those things is that they will breathe so shallow that they’re never getting that much air in. So it’s a short and fast breathing and they’re very little use of their diaphragm. And then when they finally switch it, I can’t remember the numbers on it. It’s something like, see the 40 or 60%, you can get 40 or 60% more air in when you breathe using your diaphragm compared to if it’s that short upper chest breathing. And yeah, it’s a huge number when you think of swimming, you know, and you’re only getting a couple of breaths compared to what you might do. Yeah, it’s really important to breathe well and with the right posture, chest open, it’s so much easier to do. Not only from an oxygen use and an expelling carbon dioxide perspective, but also between 40 and 60% more air has a pretty big effect on your flotation and your position in the water too, doesn’t it? Like full lungs, you’ll sit up higher,

you’ll be more streamlined compared to someone who’s just breathing APQ or the apex of their lungs not using their diaphragm. Short breaths just tend to sit lower in the water. Yeah, that’s right. It’s sort of like a, not like a self-fulfilling prophecy for people, but like when someone’s feeling like they’re exhausted when they swim, they’re usually going to breathe shorter and shallower and quicker. And so it’s just trying to be calm and relaxed. And that’s why being relaxed is a huge component of swimming well, but it’s not that easy to achieve straight off the bat because that’s not people’s first reaction when they go to water. If they have it, you know, if they’re not comfortable in it or they’re new to the sport, it’s like tense and panicked and like, you know, just, it’s hard to get them to relax, but when they get there, it’s like their whole swimming’s just turned upside down, but in the right ways. It really makes things a whole lot easier.

Brenton, it’s been such a good conversation, mate. People will have taken heaps out of this and everyone can probably hear in my voice the couple of light bulb moments I’ve had where realizations about my own training or my own technique, but mate, people are gonna wanna make contact with you. We will put some tags in the show notes and when we upload this, we’ll make sure that we tag effortlessly swimming, but where can people find you and if they do want some guidance, what are their options? Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. I’ve really, really enjoyed it. Yeah, so we run clinics around the country here in Australia, primarily Melbourne and Sydney, but we’re also in the other capital cities. So if you look up effortlessuming.com is where you’ll find all of those and we’ve got them fairly regularly and that’s where we do our underwater filming and analysis in these small group clinics and yeah, if you haven’t been filmed before

and if you do wanna improve your swimming, that’d probably be the main one for people who are listening. Otherwise, if you check out our YouTube, we’ve got heaps of videos there just to get you started with technique basically, but yeah, otherwise effortlessuming.com is probably the best place to find us. Thank you, thank you very much and I couldn’t be a bigger advocate of it. I mentioned earlier on that so many golfers go and see their golf pro for guidance and it should be, in my opinion, the same for all of the swimmers out there and the same for cyclists and the same for runners and hopefully these couple of podcasts can break down some of those barriers that have existed between people going to engage a swimming coach because it’s so useful, such a beautiful sport, so common that people participated in Australia. Hopefully we can make a few people a bit faster and keep them swimming a bit longer. Yeah, well, that’s the thing.

It’s very hard for an adult to find somewhere to go and see a swim coach because most of them are all for kids and that’s the feedback I get a lot is that there’s nothing out there for us, but yeah, that’s who we work with primarily is adults and yeah, no need to feel embarrassed about your stroke or you’re gonna be the oldest one there. Like it’s, yeah, we work with adults who might not have had a swim lesson before and yeah, and so people are pretty nervous coming into it thinking, oh, I’m gonna be the odd one out, but yeah, now we work with people without any swim experience. So yeah, that’s who I love working with because you can have the biggest improvements and just like it’s awesome watching someone go from like a 215 pace per 100 down to 145 over the course of maybe 12 months or 18 months and yeah, you can have some big improvements especially as an adult. So yeah, I love doing it and thanks for having me on the show Tim.

No worries, no one should be worried about coming down to your swimming clinic. I’ll be there in March and I’m certainly a slow hack swimmer so if I can go down, anybody can. I look forward to coming down and saying hello. 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 Back to Basics with Brenton Ford (Kieser Podcast: Healthy to 100) PART 2 appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In today’s episode, I want to talk about five things that helped me break out of the swimming rut. For the last three months or so, since coming to the pool from our recent lockdowns, it’s taking me ages to get back, much longer than what it had in the past. I want to share a couple of things that helped me finally get back down to the times that I was doing prior to the lockdowns.

01:06 Blow-Out Session
02:53 Sprint Session
04:00 Hard Massage
05:30 Kicking
06:29 Tune In To The Rhythm Of The Stroke

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

Welcome to episode number 221 of the Effortless Swimming podcast. On today’s episode, I want to talk about five things that have helped me break out of a swimming rut because for the last three months or so since coming back to the pool from our most recent lockdown and time out of the pool here, it’s taken me ages to get back much longer than what it had in the past. And so I wanted to share a couple of things that helped me finally get back down to the times that I was doing prior to prior to taking some time off in the water. So before we go into this episode, if you’ve got 15 seconds and can leave a review on iTunes or Spotify, wherever you listen to this podcast, I’ll be hugely appreciative because that’s what helps us get found by more people. And any new assistant to the show will often look at the reviews and the ratings. And so if you could leave an honest review, I’d be very grateful for that. So if you can spare 15 seconds,

thank you very much. Now, in this episode, those five things that I want to talk about, the first one is the first thing that helped me get back to where I was. You know, because prior, you know, since November, I was basically swimming between two to eight seconds slower per hundred compared to where I was prior to it. And I just like really finding it difficult to to come back. So the first thing it helped was to do a blowout session. Now, what I mean by a blowout session is a session that’s a fair bit longer than what you’d normally do. So typically when I’m training, my sessions would be around about 4k, sometimes a little bit less, sometimes a little bit more, but around about 4k. And I wasn’t doing much aerobic work before that. And one of the things that I respond really well to in terms of my fitness is longer aerobic sessions. So I started to do a couple of those. And I found that by in those sessions, which are around about

5k, so, you know, about 25% longer than what I’m used to, around the three and a half K mark, my mind was coming up with excuses to try and get me out of it. I was thinking, I could tell the group that I swim with, I need to go and take the kids to school, I need to get back home and look after the kids so my wife can go for a run. I was just coming up with all these excuses and I knew that’s what I was doing. But and thankfully I didn’t get out of the water when, you know, when I just was trying to come up with reasons why I should. And I just stuck it out. And I actually came good after about the 4k mark, like why strokes started to feel a bit better. And I just got better and better from the fourth to the fifth K mark. So that’s the first thing that helped was a blowout session. So it’s something that’s a fair bit longer than what you used to. The whole session was pretty much just aerobic pace. So it was really comfortable.

And it, yeah, that was the first thing that made a big difference for me. The second thing was a sprint session where we’re doing lots of repeat 25s. So we’re in a 50 meter pool where we train. We were doing, I think it was like about 30 or 40, 25s at almost max effort. And and I found that that really helped. So rather than doing like hard 50s and that kind of thing, just much shorter intervals of 25 meters with a bit of rest in between, that was the second thing that sort of just helped me start to start to feel good. So I’d mixed it up with some flyers and backs and breast and free. And and then I was starting to find that like throughout that that session that yeah, I started to get fatigued and my stroke was starting to fall apart a little bit towards the end. But it was just lots of those, you know, repeats at fast speed, high intensity, with enough rest in between. Where it was just kind of like a bit of a shock to the

system compared to what I’m used to doing. Now those first two, all right, they’re pretty simple ones. They’re types of sessions that helped. Now the third one that I think really helped was I got back on a Monday from a big weekend of coaching. So I coached her close to probably 20 hours and I trained a bit that week before and I was pretty exhausted. And so I booked in to get a massage and I went and got a massage and it was one of the hardest ones I’ve ever had. Where in pain, you know, through most of it. And I just got beat up basically. And that, the following two to three days after that, I felt so loose, so flexible. And when I was swimming it just, you know, I just felt like I could move like I was when I was 16 years old. So a really hard massage and I just got like a I got like a time massage that was had the person walking over me and just like, yeah, just like going very hard compared to, you know, I guess the usual one that I

would get, made a big, big difference. So don’t open me up through my hips and lower back and shoulders. And I found that when I did swim the following days after that, that I sat much better in the water. Like my hips were higher, my legs were higher. Because I think for me, you know, I get fairly tight lower back, I think from often sitting down and sometimes from surfing as well. And so that freedom through the, through the hips and hamstrings made a big difference just with body position. So I felt a lot better after that. The fourth thing was kicking. So doing some kicking, some pure kicking, so without a, without fins, without a snorkel, without a kickboard, just doing more kicking within my warm-ups. I find that I swim better when I do that. So that’s, you know, something like 8-25s of fairly hard kick. Because for me, and I’ve seen this with other swimmers too, when you’re kicking well, you’ve got much better balance and stability in the

water. Now you’re probably not going to get that much of your propulsion from your kick if you’re an adult swimming or a triathlete. But it will give you great balance and stability. And when you have that, then you typically will be much better through the front end with your catch and pull and those other things. So with a good kick, then I found that I again sat better in the water with my body position and things just felt better coordinated throughout the stroke. The fifth thing is, in some of my sessions, like I think a lot about technique, obviously it’s the thing that I talk about the most and it’s what I coach and I teach day-to-day. So I’m always thinking about it. Now in one of the sessions, and the session where I actually got back to the times that I was doing, I was thinking about my stroke early on, but then I was just, I just thought, no, what I probably need to do here is just forget about my stroke and just tune into the

effort and the rhythm of my stroke. So don’t worry about my catch, don’t worry about my entry, just tune into how you’re feeling and the output and the rhythm of the whole stroke and of the set. And I found that that made a huge difference for me because then I wasn’t overthinking anything and I was just more conscious of and more aware of what my times were, how I was feeling and then being able to tune into that rhythm, it’s almost like that, you know, the dancing part of swimming, that that actually helped me hold slightly faster times because I was aware of that, because you speed the combination of your technique and your stroke rate. So I found there I was able to hold a slightly faster stroke rate, have it feel comfortable and I could just keep my breathing under control and I was really pleased with the times, I was back to where I was prior to that that recent lockdown. So it was actually not thinking about

technique for at least some of my session and just just focusing on how I felt and the rhythm of the stroke that actually helped me sort of get back there. So I just want to share those five things with you because speaking to a lot of the athletes that I coach through our stroke analysis membership and also some in the membership is it’s like it’s a pretty common thing for a lot of people from from what I’ve heard and what I’ve with the people I’ve spoken to that quite a few people have been sort of stuck in a little bit of a rut lately and and so hopefully some of these things might help you get back to where you should be or far beyond it. So thanks very much for listening to the podcast and if you haven’t left a review I’d love it if you could and I’ll be back with another episode 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

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My guest today is Craig Bryan. A year ago, he attended our clinic, and recently, I had the chance to do another swim analysis with his swimming and saw a huge improvement. I got him on the podcast to talk about the improvement that he made and what he did to 18 seconds off his 2 km swim.

01:08 Swimming Background
04:34 Attending The Effortless Swimming Clinic
05:23 Difference In Swimming After The Clinic
07:04 Increasing The Stroke Rate
10:27 Using The Tempo Trainer
11:59 Swimming Goals
13:07 Training On Your Own
14:43 Main Drivers

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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 Craig Bryan and Craig, it’s your birthday. So first of all, happy birthday. And I’ve got you on the podcast to talk about the improvement that you’ve made in the last 12 months with your swimming, because I did a follow up filming with you. So you attended a clinic about 12 months ago, Tame did a follow up. And I did the comparison. And I was like, Jesus, this is like this is a huge improvement. And I was curious just to know what your speed improvement was and what that result was after making such an improvement with what looked a lot better. And you said you’d improved about 18 seconds per 100 for a one and a half K swim.

Yeah, for the for 2K, for 2K. Yeah, so it was about Yeah, about 18 seconds per 100 pace. Yes, that’s awesome. So to get into it, when you sort of started 12 months ago, when you did a did a clinic with us, what were you swimming, what were you training for? And tell me a bit about your swimming then.

So I hadn’t swam a bit as a kid. Started when I was about six weeks. And then, and I hated it really parents maybe do it up to I was about 13. And as soon as I had the chance, I stopped doing it. And then pretty much didn’t swim for about 20 years. And then

yeah, a couple years ago, I got merged into a different section at work. And one of the guys there swam. And yeah, they did this, this Christmas Christmas swim challenge. I thought I’ll give it a go. So I started swimming again. And yeah, he smoked me. Yeah, he was a couple of body lengths ahead by the end of the first 50. And yeah, so I was like, oh, maybe that’s a bit of motivation to start training. And yeah, so I was actually, you know, without the swim coach yelling at me, it’s actually quite enjoyable. So I kept it up for a bit. Then a couple months after that is when I came to the first, my first clinic with swimming.

Yeah, I got a couple of tips from you guys kept my swimming up. So three times a week. Two kilometers a session usually two and a half. Did the five week five day catch challenge. Had a couple months off for the lockdown. Then had their had a Christmas race again, got lost again. But I was only about by sort of just under a body length. So improved a bit. And then yeah, that’s, that’s kind of where we up to now. I did the start of the eight week freestyle challenge. And came into my yearly review kind of video with you guys. And yeah, that’s pretty much the story of my swimming. Yeah, it’s it looked, it looked so much better. And I’ll for those that are listening, probably next week, I’ll be able to put a comparison up from your first video to your to your follow up. And I’ll put that on YouTube as a as an analysis just to show people that that difference. And so you you’re around I think 159 pace for your 2k, you’re down to around

141 the last time that you that you did it, which is a huge improvement. And then what about your 50s and 100, 100 times? How’d they improve? Yeah, 50s, probably down from about 39 or 40 down to 35. So about five seconds there. And the 100, probably around 129 down to 121. But actually just since that recording, I did a 119 last week in a in a 25 meter pool. So yeah, keep and keep them coming down slowly. Yeah, that’s good. And I think as well, what looking at your videos. So one of the main things that I think you changed was the original video, you’re going out quite wide with the hand sort of a lot about sweeping the beginning, then coming back in on both arms. And then you managed to make that a bit more direct. And we talk about tracing the outside line of the body. So it’s like a long s instead of a big s shape. And so that improved a lot. And that’s probably a good contributor to it. But the catch as

well, had come along really nicely. And so when you first came to a clinic, did you have much of an idea of what you should be doing? Or maybe what you were doing when you were swimming? Or was it just like, not really a teenager? Like, so yeah, I’d swam as a kid a bit. But I feel like there’s a lot of things that have changed since then. Like, for instance, when the entry on train tracks, when I was a kid, it wasn’t on train tracks. It was like, you were sort of getting into the inline with your head kind of thing. And I’d, yeah, as a kid, I’d never been taught about a catch or

so coming into the clinic, the only sort of things I knew about were just from a couple of YouTube videos, probably yours. Okay, there’s a couple of things that I’ve heard about, but that was about it. And what about how your swimming feels now compared to what it felt like about 12 months ago? What’s the difference there? Yeah, definitely noticeably different in the feel, especially recently started playing around with that sort of pay effects and trying out sort of different kicks, like a two-beat and four-beat kick. And it feels a lot smoother, a lot more gliding through the water. I can really notice my posture sort of almost like floating through the water as opposed to dragging through the water. Yeah, definitely notice at pace that it’s a lot smoother. And what about what you’re thinking about now? So when you first, before you came to a clinic, were you thinking about much technique at all? And what about what’s

it like now? I don’t know if I was thinking about much technique before, that’s probably, yeah, just trying to swim as high as I could. Now things that I’m working on, so from the most recent video that I sent you, there was three main things that I’ve sort of been thinking of. That was keeping my kick a bit tighter, the catch a bit smoother, I guess, in that life-old shape and having a proper exit, I guess, going with all this is on my exit. And I’m still kind of playing around with a bit of the kick and serape. So they’re the things that I’m thinking about at the moment. Yeah, nice. And I reckon as well, once you’re comfortable with those couple of changes, if then it’s a good time to start to look into increasing the stroke rate a little bit, especially for the 50s and 100s, maybe a little bit for the 1k or 2k as well, but definitely for those 50s and 100s, like just getting comfortable, letting it go a little bit, to be able to

get the stroke rate up and work the kick pretty hard for a 50 and 100, because looking at your stroke, you’ve got much a lot more than a 119 in you and a lot more than a 35 in you as well. I reckon just looking at your swim there. And so part of that is finding that balance between good form, but also just going for it and getting the rating up a bit there. How do you feel in terms of, let’s say, a 119 you did the other day? Do you feel like you’ve got room to bring up the stroke rate? I do, yeah, but I guess always in the back of my head is trying to keep that really good form, really good technique, so I think that slows me down a bit in terms of the stroke rate. So, yeah, I’ve actually ordered one of the, I can’t remember all the times that you chucked in the back of your cap. The tempo trainer, yeah. The tempo trainer, yeah, so it’ll be interesting to see how that sort of helps me bring up the stroke rate and what that does.

A quick note from our sponsor. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Form Swim Goggles. With these goggles, you don’t have to look at the pace clock anymore or be one of those swimmers in the pool always grabbing for their watch. With Form Smart Swim Goggles, you can see all of your key metrics while you’re swimming. Distance, pace, stroke rate, they’ve got it all. And the swim data is displayed on the goggle lens and you can customise the display to see the metrics that you want to. And I was worried that it was going to be distracting, but you can literally see through the display the metrics are always there but you have to choose to focus on them. It’s really impressive. And it makes hitting intervals or any kind of specific training much more manageable and achievable. And the goggles track it all, it’s automated so from the time you start your session to the end of the swim you don’t have to press any buttons

in between. It automatically tracks everything. Form also works with a bunch of the best pro athletes out there including Lionel Sanders, Sarah Crowley, Hannah Wells and the Olympic champion Usama Malouli to name a few. These form goggles are for all types of swimming too. One pair of goggles and you can use them in the pool, the open water, you can use them in swim spas and endless pools too. So the same pair of goggles can be used in all of these different environments. The battery life is incredible too. One hour charge is 16 hours of swimming time battery life. And you can have the display on either your right or your left eye. The goggles themselves come with anti-fog solution that’s used in dive masks. So it’s great in terms of quality and there’s a protective case with a nifty drainage solution. So after you swim you can store them safely. And while the goggles connect to the form swim up on your smartphone too they all sync with the form app

and then you can review all of the details of your swim. And you can see what other swimmers are up to in the form swim community as well. I’m a big fan of these goggles. I was really impressed when I used them and I use them for a vast majority of the sessions that I’m currently doing. To find out more about the form swim goggles go to formswim.com and you can use our coupon code effortless at checkout and save $15 off your order. Back to the podcast. Yeah that’d be interesting. So you could do I mean in the eight week course in that yeah there’s a set there to sort of gradually increase it. So like if you’re all out 50 for example though it’d be good to do a couple where like you just let it let it rip where you might set it like a hundred which is really fast and you’ll probably have no hold at all if you just be spinning the wheels and see like just see what your time is you’ll be exhausted after it but then go from like maybe a hundred

maybe down to 90 and then like 85, 80, 75 and just yeah just because that hundred will make it make that 80 stroke rate feel so slow that it’s good to have that contrast so yeah I’d be curious to see what your times do when when you do use that. I think at the moment I’m probably around 70 on my my sprints so yeah definitely a lot slower than 100 so that’ll feel different. Yeah it’d be good to um because I mean you probably don’t want to go to 100 to actually use that but yeah I think something like an 80 or at least could be could be good and when when you use it as well there’s that setting to have it beep say like a hundred times a minute if you set it to beep 50 times a minute instead and just match it with your like your left arm yeah so so you’re not trying to you’ve got the beep beep beep in your head it’s just like a beep but you match it with your left stroke only so it doesn’t send you crazy yeah can help as well

quick tip and uh and going forwards what do you have you got any goals in terms of target times or people you want to beat or anything like that like what what are you looking to do over the next couple of months with you Simee? Yeah so I definitely like to beat the guy at work so I’ve got a few months to train for that at Christmas

but yeah I guess if I can get 100 under I mean a 15 I’d be pretty happy just off the walk on a thing and maybe a 2k under 30 minutes would be pretty happy

yeah hopefully ideally as an ocean swim for the 2k under 30 minutes but some I guess that also depends on conditions yeah yeah oh that’s uh yeah I’ll be looking forward to see how you go over the next well say next next 10 11 months to to go towards it because I think it’s certainly possible and I’ve seen yeah a lot of Simees that we’ve worked with have that improvement and 18 seconds in a year is is really good and but I don’t think you’re capped at at your 140 ones for that at all so that’d be yeah that’d be exciting and with your training at the moment so you said you do about two two and a half k per session are you training on your own are you training with friends or or with the squad how do you normally work at uh usually train them oh yeah definitely always train on my own the pool near me doesn’t have a um like an adult squad um which is like I’d like to join the squad but training my own also suits me um

definitely helps when like I’ve got the five five day catch and eight week freestyle program so um yeah I’m quite quite good at um being consistent and um and strict with those I guess so it also helps yeah just being able to set my own time and um like I can go at lunch or before work after work that kind of thing yeah I think it’s yeah it’s really good for when you swim on your own for me personally I find I can concentrate on my stroke better and uh I can usually be you the water’s a bit smoother because you’re not sitting behind someone five seconds so you’ve got that advantage and sometimes the disadvantages you may not push as hard so in terms of fitness sometimes that can suffer a little bit but the technical side of it I think you can usually do better when you are training on your on your own and you’re not you’re not sort of rushing your stroke at all because you’re trying to keep up with people in your lane

and now it’s easy to fall into that habit with the squad so um yeah if you aren’t a squad you can still improve and if you train on your own you can yeah still improve as well so just use what you’ve got and um yeah it doesn’t matter sort of either either way I think and um and what what’s one of the main sort of drivers for you with with why you swim is it like do you feel good afterwards does it help you with work is it the the challenge of getting better what are some of those motivations I think probably the challenge of getting better yeah um yeah I guess I never had that as a kid I was just swimming because I had to swim now I kind of enjoy the process of of learning and improving um yeah I guess that’s sort of a few things in my life like that just that the whole process of improving is um probably what keeps me coming back that’s the main thing and swimming it’s quite obvious you can see both the pace come

down but then just visually like the straight looks better kind of thing as well yeah yeah it’s uh it’s good like that it’s you know whether or not you’re getting better just based on the times and then to see that visually as well is um is great so yeah I think in you filming in January so then maybe like April May June somewhere along there would be a good time to to see where you’re at and again and um yeah be interested to see that continued improvement so um yeah in terms of finishing up here is there anything um that you think the people listening should should know anything that you’ve learned along the way with your own swimming that you think could be helpful for for others? um sort of put on the spot here yeah I guess probably that I mean just I was talking to my wife I was like I’m gonna go on this podcast and she’s like what are you gonna talk about all you did was just um listen to their tips and swim three times a week

consistently yeah I guess that’s all I did so I don’t know maybe that’s the tip just uh just be consistent and um yeah enjoy it I guess um if you can find enjoyment and stay consistent you probably see results yeah I love it it’s it’s it’s funny isn’t like to put simply it’s like it’s those two things really it’s like be consistent with it and you’re doing three times a week which I think is the sort of the the minimum you need to do to see good improvement so you sort of tick that box and then focus on your stroke and you know apply those tips and it can be kept pretty simple in the end really like that’s uh that’s all it takes so that’s um I like that it’s really good well um Craig I appreciate you being on the on the podcast and sharing your improvement over the last 12 months and looking forward to seeing how you progress in the next 12 months yeah that’s good awesome thank you you’re having me yeah 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: What’s Possible In 12 Months with Craig Bryan appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is the Queen Of English Channel, Chloe McCardel who has successfully swam across the English Channel for a record-breaking 44th time. Join us as Chloe talk about her experience in achieving this record-breaking feat.

01:47 Keeping Eye On The Price
02:45 Has It Got Any Easier?
04:28 Unsuccessful Crossing
06:15 More Channel Crossings?
08:04 Last Swim
13:43 92 km Relay Swim

https://chloemccardel.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.

Alright, welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. I’ve got a repeat guest on and someone who is very special. In fact, she is the queen, the Queen of England English Channel, but Chloe McCartle. Chloe, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me on. So as of October last year, you just broke the world record for the most crosses of the English Channel at 44 crossings, which is an insane amount of crossings. Most people wouldn’t consider doing 44 laps when they go to the pool, but it is a huge achievement. So first of all, congratulations on that huge achievement. And like how do you feel now that you’ve got it? Because I didn’t know this was something you were going for, but I imagine you’ve had it in your mind for quite a while. Like how long have you thought about this for?

Yeah, it’s a very special title. I’m very honoured to now have this so Queen of the Channel is the woman in the world with the most channel crossings, but I also happen to be ten ahead of the King of the Channel, the man with the most. So it’s the overall overall world record. I’ve been dreaming about this since 2016. So probably just the last five years. I didn’t didn’t start thinking about this when I started channel swimming. It kind of came mid-career. And because I’m trying to think when I had you on the podcast last, it was probably 2017, I’m I’m guessing. And were you just were you thinking I’ll just keep because you’re over there quite a bit? You know, you think I’ll just keep ticking them off and it’ll eventually happen or was it something that you sort of set aside a majority of your year to be able to commit to?

Yeah, you got that in one with your first guess. So because I coach so many people from the English Channel, it’s been over 150 people now since 2013. I’m over there with my commitments to them anyway. So what I was doing and I have been doing for the last five years or so is slotting in swims whenever I can around my commitments to my clients and just knowing in the back of my head, as long as I consistently keep adding at least a few each year than at some point, as long as I keep going back and getting in the water that I’ll get there, because none of the other swimmers that were high up with channel swims, as in total numbers, are actively swimming. None of them are actually swimming for at least nearly 15 years. So I figured that I just got to keep at it, keep my eye on the prize and keep coming back and splashing my way to France. Yeah, talk about patience like it’s, yeah, that is that’s consistency. It’s patience over the last couple of years

to be able to do it. And have you has it got any easier over the last couple of years that you’ve been doing it? Or is it since you’ve done your first couple, has it been pretty much the same in terms of how you view it now?

I think by the time, I guess, 2015 rolled around by then I could consistently like bang out a channel swim for one of a better word so that a general channel swim is more like a tough training swim. And by the time I had that confidence, like so that year in 2015, I did three single crossings in six days and they’re all under 10 hours. So I had the confidence at that stage and I’m like, I can, I can just on, you know, minimal turnaround or minimal recovery, get in and get the swims done. And I don’t need to focus on them really intently as individuals, but I can run campaigns and run them concurrently while looking after my clients overseas. So it’s not something that I was complacent about. I just I guess I created a formula for me, something that really worked. And I think that everyone has the opportunity to find something in their life that’s personal, professional or sporting that if they really want to master and be really good at it and

focus on energy on it, they can get to the point of mastery where, you know, for them to achieve that tasks or keep hitting that goal, it’s, you know, it’s there at a point where it doesn’t take as much energy as it does other people because that level of mastery and for single crossings, I’m not gonna say I have that level of confidence for anything more than that in the channel as in doubles of the singles. I definitely reached a point, I would say of mastery in 2015. Was there has it been any that you’ve attempted and hadn’t been able to complete it because of weather or health or anything like that?

The single crossings, I have 100% success rate, which I’m super proud of because it shows consistency and it shows that I have always taken them really seriously, although to a point, some of that is luck because anyone can get hit by issues such as mechanical failure of the boat and that would abort a swim. No matter how good the swimmer is or how close you are to France, that’s a swim abort it. A heavy fog, for example, reduces visibility. So if you’re coming towards the shipping lanes or in the ship international shipping lanes, you know, with huge ships that could be 800 meters long and have 2000 containers on them. Like if there’s heavy fog, your swim is aborted. So I’ve never had that situation and that is luck. But the rest of it is, you know, consistency and training and things like that. So the other three swimmers that are at 30 plus channel swims all have at least one failure. Yeah, wow. That’s that’s single crossings, one failure.

So I have I had been unsuccessful on return trips. So my first attempt to double crossing the English channel, my first year channel swimming, I didn’t finish the second leg, as in the second crossing back to England, that’s an unsuccessful. My first two attempts at triple crossing of the English channel were unsuccessful. Any of the second or the third leg then I tried the quadruple crossing one year and that was just really unsuccessful. So I didn’t like to fail and have that acute pain and that following kind of depression after a big event we’ve been unsuccessful. So I do know those feelings. I had that understanding empathy for swimmers that go through that. I have a bit of both. I have success, I have failure as well. Do you are you driven to continue to build up the numbers to keep crossing it or now that you’ve got that achievement, are you content with where you’re at at least for now? I got to a point where I think if

I did more channel crossings

in fact, you’re probably not even motivated to do the crossings right now. It wouldn’t really add in specialness to to what my journey so far for me. I was really focused on getting this Queen the channel journey for about what crossing total was I have from about 20, 15 or 20. So it’s been a slow burn to get to 44 from let’s say number 15.

So I’ve been, yeah, I’ve been both like moving along this journey in anticipation of finishing, you know, like, you know, when you look forward to Christmas, like wanting it to come sooner and you can’t wait, you look forward to it. But on the other end, I’m like, oh, my God, this is just going on and on forever. So there’s a part of me that just did did want to put a closure on this part of my journey and I really felt that I had that moment at the end of the 44th swim. I had the euphoric feeling that I was I’d been hoping for for years. I had great press coverage. I was front page of two UK newspapers after the 44th swim. And I had that that moment of closure. So in saying that, if anyone tries to threaten the record

for Australia and women for all the things that I love about the channel. But I just don’t think that’s going to be happening in the next decade or so. So I’ve got a decade at my sleeve where I can go on other adventures and speaking of other adventures, I’ve got another another adventure happening this year, which is very exciting. So do you want to actually, before we jump into that one, which we’ll cover in a second, which it’s yeah, I’m excited to talk about about that. What what was it like for you when you when you’re maybe halfway through the swim on your last lap and you thought, yeah, OK, I’ve got this in the bag and, you know, this is probably going to be the last time at least for a while. What was that experience like towards the end and when you your feet landed on the sand? Like how how did you feel?

Yeah, it’s so interesting you say that and I had so so many mixed feelings leading to that last swim and a few radio announcers will ask me, you know, are you feeling nostalgic? What do you think your thoughts will be of that last swim? So when I got into it at about halfway, that’s when sunrise came. So I was really soaking in that last sunrise because I knew there was a really good possibility it could be the last English Channel sunrise that I ever experienced as a swimmer. And I don’t know if you’ve been on one of these channel boats, but they’re amazing. The sunrises, I just can’t convey how rich they are, how beautiful they are and how epic they are when you’re in the middle of the channel and the sun is rising and there’s ships in the background and and you’re just one little swimmer traversing between two countries. So I really I was more present than I guess I usually am because I knew that it was my my last chance to make memories

of something that is really close, something very special to me. I call the English Channel my spiritual home. So I was trying to really be present, be in the moment, collect all those positive memories. But in saying that, it’s still still a 10 hour swim. So it’s still one moment. Some moments was like, oh no, I kind of hope we get near the end as we’ve got the last two to three hours towards the end. I was like, shit, where’s the media boat? Like, is it coming? So my team and I, my media team in the UK, had organised a second separate media boat to come out. But because we didn’t know exactly when I’m finished, there was no logistics to make all that happen. It’s like herding cats trying to get 10 different media outlets to send the representatives to get on a boat at the same time and find out from the channel like that is a bit of a logistical task. So I was like, oh, is it going to come? It’s late. So I was fretting a little

bit. I actually slowed down in the last swim. I was so paranoid that it was not going to make the end in time. I slowed my stroke down. Now I wish I hadn’t. I did 10 hours one minute and I’m definitely going to have 10 hours. And I was also really great along throughout that swim that the conditions were really favourable. They were nearly flat conditions the whole way. The air temp was pretty good. It wasn’t warm. It was mid-autumn. But it was definitely, it wasn’t overcast. I would call that favourable for an autumn swim in England. And I was a little bit concerned because I had a chest infection. So ideally, I wouldn’t have been swimming a channel on that day. But as my pilot was going on holiday the next day, it was either swim that day or wait two weeks to then have an opportunity. Not a guarantee but an opportunity for women. It’s a further into autumn. So I was a little bit concerned about that. And when I got near the end,

I did kind of have this feeling like, at least surreal feeling like, is this it? Is this all I have to do? Well, I had to cross the waterline like, and then it became kind of a little bit like, is this just too easy?

There weren’t even big waves. I didn’t have to navigate huge boulders, which I do often. And a really good friend from France, Patrice Chasserie, who follows channel swimmers and tries to meet them at the swim finishes wherever he can. He was down there and he had this this bottle of champagne and he printed the label on and he was like, congratulations, Chloe, World Record 44. And he had it to me. I was like, oh, my God, that’s so beautiful. So I had a really lovely moment on show. I didn’t want to really be there by myself. Like, yay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, what I do with my hands. Yeah. Go in here. Go ahead.

Did the media boat make it? Yeah, yeah, they did. They had to keep a distance. So I didn’t I didn’t get that many good shots. They did their best. But and there’s some drone footage. So yeah, everything went really quite well. It was interesting, quite interestingly, quite uneventful because channel swimmers can all sorts of things can go wrong and challenges come your way. And in terms of channel swimmers, definitely one of the easiest I’ve done. Not that it’s ever easy, but it was forgiving, which I really wanted my last one because I’ve had some horrible swings over the years and I had the chest infection. So it was it was nice to have a forgiving swing where I didn’t feel like, you know, I had to punish myself just to get to France. Yeah, Mother Nature awarded you for 43 crossings and delivered one. Yeah, served one up for you. It’s good. It’s good to know.

And so and now that you’ve you’ve done that year, you’ve been doing this for a while, you’re moving into more coaching people, which you’ve done for a while, but also trips. And so we’re chatting almost just before Christmas when we caught up down in Geelong. And there’s a trip that you or a swim that you’ve come up with and you’ll be running this season and and ongoing that sounds pretty crazy by from what I’ve heard in terms of the distance and everything, but something that’s quite new to the relay swimming community. So do you want to talk a bit about about that and who’s involved and what’s happening with it? Yeah, I’d love to. I’m really excited. This is my new passion now that my chapter on this child swimming has closed for now anyway. And that’s a new relay format that I’m launching with my own support boat, my own pilots, my own swim association to ratify it. And that is relays between England starting at Ramsgate,

which is in the southeast. It’s in Kent, quite close to Dover, but further north. So Ramsgate to Newport, which is a coastal town in Belgium and it’s just over the French border. So it probably only be a 20 minute drive if you drive from Dunkirk. And all the good listeners may be familiar with that place in northern France. The distance, as you said, it is so much further than the channel. It’s 2.5 times the distance. So it’s a 92 kilometer relay swim. And the relays have 10 swims each and they rotate every 30 minutes. And so why I’ve championed this new relay format is that I feel that I want to make open water swimming swimming and inventions where we go on escrow boat and achieve a brand new huge achievement. I want to make it more accessible to more people. And at the moment with English channel swimming rotations need to be one hour. And I think that to some people that works really well and for other people it actually turns them off

even thinking about doing a relay in this channel because they think, oh, how can I do a full hour in the English channel each time in water that could be anywhere from 13 to say 17 Celsius, depending on when you swim. So what I’ve done is drop the relay rotations down to 30 minutes. And I really want to encourage people to see this as something quite achievable even though it’s really difficult. I mean, the North Seas were known for very choppy stormy weather and the water temperature is just a tad colder than the English channel. So it’s still challenging. But in the back of their mind, they know that they only need to swim 30 minutes per rotation. And so in a team of 10 over five hours, it’s just one rotation in 10. So 30 minutes of swimming, four and a half minute hours, sorry, not minutes, four and a half hours of resting on the boat, sleeping, socializing, having food. There’s a proper kitchenette. There’s four cabins on the boat.

It’s quite a comfortable boat and more comfortable than you’ll find in the English channel area. So I’m really excited about this. And there’s three relays running this year in 2022, two relays running next year. And next year, there’s an Aussie only relay. So any of the Aussies out there that think, hey, I really want to do this, but I want to do it with my fellow countrymen and women. I’m really excited to announce I’ve beclosed off a whole exclusive relay to give you a chance to have that experience. So there’s been a really good interest rate from interest rate. I mean, interest. Previous swimmers on my program, they’ve done the English channels. They’re kind of getting excited and signing up. So I’ve already got three Aussies in there who have swum the English channel in relays. And it’s really exciting because for me, my English channel journey, although I’ve swum the channel 44 times, a lot of my journey is also coaching swimmers

and crewing on their boats and vicariously living through their journeys as they swim the English channel. And to have these returning swimmers is really special because it shows me that they really enjoyed that experience and they want to go on a new adventure. So it feels like I’m going through a bit of a reunion with a lot of my swimmers because they’re now coming back. And this is like phase two or this is like the next thing that we get to do together and I get to be part of the journey. So I’m really excited about what the future holds and I love that I can keep these connections, this era of the world. So the North Sea, where these swims are going to happen, it’s virtually next door to the English channel. It’s only about 20 kilometers north. So it’s essentially the same water, although the waters acts a little bit differently because it’s not in geographically the same containment. But I’m really excited to get back out there.

I don’t want to say goodbye to my adventures in the Northern Hemisphere. I’m going to keep having these ventures for as long as I can. Well, the good thing about that too is with the English channel association and like it’s a certain number of swims that can be done every year and where you’re running edits a new route and you can basically, you’ve got like mostly, like not free reign, but you can organize it when works best and there’s no limitations on it. Is that right? Yeah, it is. It’s really interesting you bring that up. You may have heard that there’s a three to four year wait now to book an English channel solo or relay, which is very unfortunate for people that want to get out there and challenge themselves but not sure they can commit to something that far in advance. And this opens up a whole new opportunity for swimmers to achieve something great, which is very similar to a channel swim. In some ways, in a relay format,

it’s harder because it’s two and a half times as far and colder water, chop your water without having to wait three to four years to get an opportunity. And yes, you’re right. I could run them virtually whenever I wanted. I only have one boat, so we can only work in one activity at any one time. But there is a lot of flexibility so I can make the most of the English summer and the English early autumn, which is ideal because it’s better water temperature than the rest of the year. I’m not going to say warm because it’s never really warm in the UK. I think we can all agree on that. But yeah, there’s a lot of opportunities out there and I’m so excited to be going on some new adventures with people. It’s just, I’m just burst of excitement. I think this year’s going to be really special. Yeah, it’s especially when a group of people are working towards something and they come together and they do that swim. Like you get, there’s this bond that you get

from doing something challenging with other people that you don’t get in other things. So I think back to swim camps I’ve done like I’ve been a part of or swim camps I’ve run. It’s like when you’ve got that blood, sweat and tears with other people, you form that strong friendship. And I find that with people I grew up swimming with it’s like you’ve been through the trenches and that’s a really strong bond that you can form. So I think you’ll have that happen on the trip and it’s something that you don’t obviously get on a solo swim, but with the team it makes it that much more enjoyable. But also, you know, you don’t want to let your teammates down. So you’ve got that accountability to do the training, spend that time in the cold water and make sure that you’re well prepared for the swim. Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s why my program has quite a few people that come back into it is because it’s not just about the swimming.

It’s all the other thing. It’s a community we create together. It’s the new friendships of people they make often from overseas. So I have all your friends with Americans have met through my program and Europeans and it’s all a beautiful mixture of the global swimming community getting to know each other, having these experiences and look, I’m like that as well. You know, I want to have these attempts incredible bonding experiences with other amazing human beings and enjoy the best of what the ocean can offer us. So I guess that’s why I’m so excited is because I can’t wait for these journeys to go and we also have camps that I’m running as in conjunction with getting people ready for this relay happening this year and also the relay happening next year is, as I said, three this year and two next year. So the camps are gonna be exciting and… Where are you doing those? So Mornington Peninsula is the first one coming up

and that’s May 7th this year. That’ll run again next year. And the other one is in Dorset. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of that. That’s south of England, knee isle of white. Yeah, right. And when are you doing that? And what are you doing? It’s in the top. Sorry, that’s June. I don’t have the dates organised yet. But that being announced really soon. And the beautiful thing there is that it’s a geographically significant area. So there’s fossils from the Jurassic period that you can see there on some of the beaches. And there’s beautiful limestone chalk cliffs, like very white cliffs. So, yes, definitely more adventures to be had. Yeah, that’s great.

And I was worried that it was going to be distracting, but you can literally see through the display the metrics are always there, but you have to choose to focus on them. It’s really impressive. And it makes hitting intervals or any kind of specific training much more manageable and achievable. And the goggles track it all. It’s automated. So from the time you start your session to the end of the swim, you don’t have to press any buttons in between. It automatically tracks everything. Form also works with a bunch of the best pro athletes out there, including Lionel Sanders, Sarah Crowley, Hannah Wells and the Olympic champion Usama Malouli to name a few. These form goggles are for all types of swimming too. One pair of goggles and you can use them in the pool, the open water, you can use them in swim spas and endless pools too. So the same pair of goggles can be used in all of these different environments. The battery life is incredible too.

One hour charge is 16 hours of swimming time battery life. And you can have the display on either your right or your left eye. The goggles themselves come with anti-fog solution that’s used in dive masks. So it’s great in terms of quality and there’s a protective case with a nifty drainage solution. So after you swim, you can store them safely. And while the goggles connect to the form swim app on your smartphone too, they will sync with the form app and then you can review all of the details of your swim. And you can see what other swimmers are up to in the form swim community as well. I’m a big fan of these goggles. I was really impressed when I used them and I use them for a vast majority of the sessions that I’m currently doing. To find out more about the form swim goggles, go to formswim.com and you can use our coupon code, effortless at checkout and save $15 off your order. Back to the podcast. And before we jumped on the podcast,

you said, hang on a minute, I’ve got a, I can’t just give me five minutes. I need to, I’ve got some exciting news. So you’ve got like with what you do with the swims

and the camps and everything like PR is a big one in order to do what you do, to fill the camps and everything. Similarly with what I do, it’s like you’ve got that marketing side of it which you need to have. And I think it’s really important and you want to make the most of it. And then the benefit of that too is you get on TV, you get on some of the morning programs and continue to build your profile which is really important as a swimmer. And so you’ve just had a call from a radio station. I’ll let you fill in the rest. Yeah, that this is very true. So I rang you in shock about 30 minutes ago and I was like, oh my God, you would never, like you would never imagine the call I’ve just had. So I was on Fox FM, which is Australian radio network. Yesterday they had a call-in segment where you just call in and it was about things that you can’t live down, like things that you’ve done that you know your friends and family

always bring up and things like that. Anyway, so I rang in, I’ve been on the radio before after my channel swims and they put me on at the end. I was so excited I was coming back on. So we talked, this is where the conversation went. So I thought it’d be about, okay, the fact I swam the channel 44 times but they turned it into, well, they started off with like pooling in the pool and they’re like, you would never have done that. And I’m like, oh, I know that I would admit. We’re still talking pooling right now. And then I go, oh, but you know in the English channel and they’re like, what? Well, you know, you can’t get on the boat. Where are you supposed to go? So they, yeah, they were loving that. Then the conversation just, you turn. One of them, Tommy Little has recently taken up training as in very recently. And he talked about how he can just swim 50 meters and he wanted us to know if he’s officially a swimmer.

So he wanted my opinion on this. And I was like, yeah, if you can like move forward 10, 12 meters, you definitely call yourself a swimmer. And then I was like, you know what, Tommy? You could swim in my England to Belgium relays. So I just threw it out there, just to, you know, plug my England to Belgium relays if I’m super excited about it. And he’s like, oh, maybe I could. And so after a few phone calls, this is only yesterday afternoon. This started 24 hours ago. After a few phone calls, meetings with his producers and team at the network, he’s rung me back this morning. He was like, I’m 100% in. And I’ve told him all the worst stuff. I’m like, what in Celsius yet? He’s like, I understand. And I’m like, you’re gonna have to train three to four times a week. He’s like, yes, I’ve got it. I’m so surprised. Like I’m still in shock. But I’m really excited. So he’s joining the world first team and that is July 5th this year.

That’s the first team to go off and that’s full. There are two other teams that are still open at the moment that people can book into. One starts July 15, one starts July 26. They will probably fill the next four weeks or so. So if anyone is interested, you can jump on my website and there’s lots of information in there or you can send me an email. My website is my name, ChloeMcCuddle.com. And my email is very similar at ChloeMcCuddle.com. And we can have a chat and explore to see if there’s something for you this year or potentially next year. That Aussie really is gonna fill out at 10 and there’s already four people in it. So that’s probably gonna fill out in the next four to five weeks as well. But yeah, if it’s something that interests you, you don’t wanna wait three, four years to swim in the English Channel and you want an amazing adventure. And you wanna party in Belgium because there’s going to be one hell of a party,

I think at the end of each of these swims. Then we’d love to have you on board this crazy journey. Yeah, that’s exciting. Well, we’ll put your email your website in our show notes for anyone listening and get in touch with Chloe if this is something that interests you. And some of the feedback I get from the podcast is a lot of people enjoy where we have marathon swimmers like yourself on because they’re inspired by it. They look at that and go, well, that would be awesome. So if you’ve perhaps thought of doing something that’s a little bit out there, then this is something that counts as being out there. And yeah, it’s exciting that you’ve opened up, I think a new chapter of long distance relay swimming. And it’s good. I really like how when people go outside of the norm and you’ve sort of, I wouldn’t say what you’ve done is the norm doing 44 crossings, but the English Channel’s probably the most well-known long distance swim in the world.

But now you’re sort of venturing out of that and creating your own thing and treading your own path. So it’s exciting and I wish you all the best. And I was thinking earlier, you might get in a decade or two decades time, someone’s coming up through the ranks, they’re ticking off the English crossings. And then we might have you at 60, 70 years of age going, I cannot let them win and you’ll go back and you’ll start, yeah, you’ll keep training and you just won’t stop. So we’re interested to see what happens in the next two, three decades time. Yeah, I might knock out some with an octogenarian. And we’ll be like hardly walking and I’ll be like, are you doing this? I’m trying to cram. I remember, before I really knew about master swim because I coached your PowerPoints for a while there and before I knew about masters, I was probably 15 or 16 years of age. And I remember dad went to a master swim company said, there was a 1500 freestyle

and there was a, I think a lady who was like, in her 80s or 90s who entered the 1500 and it took like an hour and a half or something like that. I remember that’s like, oh dad spoke about when he went to this, there was like masters nationals and he was like, it was impressive. But boy, it took a while, you know, and it took up half the meat. So that’ll be you, but doing English channel crossings.

Yeah, I’ll be like, there’s no time limit. I just need to get to France. Yeah, that’s right. Just drift with the tides and hopefully you’ll get there. And I won’t be with anyone up because I have my private boat, which I’ll own of course, like that. I’ll have my own boat in that world. And I’ll be like, fellas, I’m paying you over time. Just keep the engine running. Yeah, that’s right. So as long as you can stay warm, then you’ll eventually get there. That’s funny. Well, Chloe, thanks so much for being on the podcast and congratulations once again and good luck for the next journey, the next phase of your journey. Thank you so much. And of course, everyone, if you wanna do your stroke correction leading into your England to Belgium relays, renting means what you have. Well, thanks very much. I have quite a few people who’ve worked with you who come and do our clinics and stuff. So I’m sure we’ll have many more to come as well.

And yeah, it’s great working with people who have got several thousand strokes to take as they cross the channel or they’re in a relay because if you can improve one or 2% over the course of 5,000, 10,000 strokes, all of those 1% things really add up. So yeah, appreciate your support and thanks for being on the podcast, Chloe. Okay, until next time. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post The Queen Of English Channel with Chloe McCardel appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

On this episode, I was recently a guest on Kieser’s Healthy to 100 podcasts. I was a guest there for two episodes. I thought it would be great to publish it in our own podcast because I think you will thoroughly enjoy the things we talked about in this podcast. It’s pretty much going to basic with freestyle, with swimming and we looked at what really matters, what’s worth knowing, what’s worth doing when it comes to freestyle. I hope you enjoy this episode.

00:36 Background
02:13 Peak Of Swimming Career
04:35 Swimming Sessions
05:57 Training Sessions
06:52 Consistency
07:44 Load Management
08:27 Technique
10:02Common Technique Problems
13:26 Head Position in Pool And In Openwater
14:36 Alignment
17:13 Ripping the Band-Aid Off
20:53 Catch And Pull
21:35 High Elbow Catch
24:50 Shoulder Pain
32:43 Lower Back Pain

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Welcome to episode number 218 of the effortless swing podcast on this episode I was recently a guest on the keys of podcast and they have a podcast called healthy to 100 and I was a guest on there for two episodes and this is the first episode that they published on their own Show and I thought it’d be great to be able to just publish this on our own podcast because I think a lot of this information You really enjoy it’s pretty much going back to basics with freestyle with swimming and we look at what matters What’s worth knowing what’s worth doing when it comes to freestyle? so I hope you enjoy this episode now if you’re listening on perhaps iTunes or Spotify if you haven’t left us a review That’s the one thing that I ask of you to do because when you leave us a review That helps us get bound by more people when they’re searching in their podcast app So if you haven’t left us a review I would love it if you could do me a favor and just leave us an honest

Hopefully positive review of the podcast. So thanks very much for listening and here is the episode It was with Tim Deppman from Kaiser and keys is a physio and a gym based in Australia. They’ve got it a bunch of Locations around the country and I’m a big fan of what they do. So I appreciate them having me on the show and Yeah, go check them out healthy to 100. Here’s the episode Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life Here’s your host Brenton Ford

Thanks and Ford. Thank you very much for joining us on healthy to 100 But I’m really looking forward to this chat today being a bond-eyed boy and getting out in the water this morning going for a swim I need some help with my swimming technique, mate. Well, hopefully you’ve come to the right person. I appreciate you having me on Tim Brenton before we get started lots of our listeners really keen to hear more about Swimming but can you just give everyone a little bit of of your background for us, please? Yeah, I started a really young age in the water my granddad used to run the mall swimming pool in Victoria And so I was always around there when I was growing up and then my so he was a coach My dad was a coach and he coached me when I was a teenager and mum and dad run as learn the swim business at the moment And I somehow I don’t know how fell into coaching and

Started I started coaching when I went to university So I was coaching there at Melbourne Uni for I think two years and really enjoyed it And eventually started a business in that area where I started running clinics and looking to focus mostly on underwater filming and technique and now work with with adults to help them swim faster and a bit more efficiently But as a as a kid I made a few national age group finals So I did alright there, but I just love the coaching side of it and I’ve done that for the last 15 years now And I wouldn’t want to wouldn’t want to stop either. It’s just I’m lucky that I get to marry my passion of swimming Along with also, I think running a business and helping a lot of people just become better swimmers So yeah done it for quite a while now, but it’s it’s funny how things happen I never planned that as a kid to start coaching But now you just gravitate to what you love and I’m glad I get to do it

Brenton, I’m glad you eventually there got to a little bit of your success As a swimmer, I thought you were just going to completely gloss over it and I was going to have to pull you up So you are a swimming coach today, but you’re you’re a national level elite swimmer before you got to that so Tell us a little bit about what was what was the peak of your career? What was the achievement from an elite perspective that you’re most proud of? Yeah, my best result was fifth in the 400. I am at at national age championships and

The reason for that the reason why I think that was my best success was I had this time in mind that I wanted to do And 12 months out. I started visualising it Almost every day and I put the training in put the work in and when it came to the the final at nationals I

I was about half a second off that time but like everything pretty much came together what I visualised for for that race and So I was really proud of proud of that and Yeah, and and then after that I went on and I was just off olympic trials was about point one second Yeah point one of a second off qualifying for olympic trials, but Yeah, and then I started I did a season of triathlon as well where I built up and did a full-on man as a Bucket list thing to tick off before I had kids and really enjoyed that as as well. And so I broke the I broke the age group swim record in that in that event over in New Zealand And I definitely went out pretty hard in the swim for the Ironman and probably burnt quite a few candles Before the bike and the run but my ego was on the line there So I yeah, I went pretty hard in the swim with a about another nine hours to go in the race But I didn’t care. I still won the swim out of a couple thousand people and was proud of that and then just suffered for the next nine hours

Brett said I love an Ironman story and and Teopo’s a beautiful Ironman I could talk about that all day, but I didn’t want to touch on your elite experience because I love the idea that you’ve come from an elite background And I want to ask you how many training sessions you were doing and stuff like that But that you’re you’re taking those lessons and applying them to your your weekend warrior to your average Joe and that’s such a big part of this podcast is I firmly believe that the training principles that applied to you as an elite swimmer Apply in a diluted fashion obviously for time and cost reasons and all those things, but they apply to I treated a patient earlier this morning who’s Focusing on the open water series up here in Sydney and I’m sure that’s kind of the everyday person that you’re looking after So just just quickly When you’re at your peak, how many swimming sessions how how many strength sessions you’re doing per week?

How many hours do you reckon you’re devoting to your performance? Yeah, so when I was training full-time and racing in national level it was It was eight or nine swim sessions a week with I think we’re doing three gym There so it was it was pretty full-on and this is all with school and there wasn’t many times where I fell asleep in class and got pulled up on it And and but now obviously it’s a bit more about coaching in those sorts of things so at the moment I swim three to four times a week and When I’m in my normal routine try and do two two gym sessions and along with that I’ll I’ll do some run-ins and that sort of thing as well But I think for you know for people who are probably working full-time. Maybe they’re semi-retired Yeah, I train with a lot of people who are in that stage of their life And yeah, definitely some of those principles that the elite swimmers Uh incorporating into their their training

They certainly apply for for those that that might be swimming a couple times a week and not competing at that level But they’re still doing it like the the open water series up there in sydney So I think one of those principles is just consistency Swimming’s one of those things where if you take if you would be swimming a couple times a week Usually and you take one or two weeks out The first thing that you’ll notice when you get back in is you tend to lose that feel for the water that that people talk about and Swimming’s like like no almost like no other sport where you just lose that that feel for it pretty quickly compared to say Running or or maybe riding like yeah, you might lose a bit of fitness in those ones But swimming you just tend to um, it feels like it takes another week or two to get back into it so consistency is really important and also just um managing your Your load and your Your work throughout the the week so

The swimmers that can just be consistent with it and not have one huge session within the week and they Will then be so fatigued or they might injure themselves because they’ve just gone too hard in the one session and then they’re out for Maybe a week It’s those that can just sort of manage their their load throughout those those sessions that tend to to do really well So it’s um, I’ve certainly been there where I’ve wanted to go really hard in one session I blow up and I injure myself and and then I’m out for a little while so it’s um, you know, just making sure that you

In tune with your workload throughout the the week And then just I think technique as well and that’s obviously what I Specialized in when I’m coaching but With with technique at like swimming such a technical sport that without without that then it doesn’t matter how hard your work You’re going to be You’re probably going to be working a lot harder than you need to and one of the biggest complaints I get from people is particularly I work with triathletes and they’re Super fit super fit and then I’ll say I’ll keep getting passed by this guy in the next lane who’s like He’s got 30 kilos on me and he does not look fit at all and I know I’m fitter than him But he just glides past me and it’s a frustration that they have So it’s just it’s technique that that really comes down to it Yeah, I’d love to touch on that and for everyone listening we’re going to do two podcast episodes We’re going to talk a bit about technique now and then we’re going to come back to some of the

wider training principles of swimming afterwards Technique as a physio Brent and it’s so interesting Seeing swimmers and talking to swimmers about that experience that you just just mentioned there Because the thing that worries me is well for that person Who is swimming slower and probably inefficient is probably the description we would both use Is where are they then overloading their joints or which part of their body are they overloading because that’s going to be the one that breaks down So let’s start with with an example, mate. Like your average your average swimmer You know wants to improve their speed and their efficiency a little bit. So they might be let’s say they’re 50 They come to see you What are some of the common Technique problems that that you come across and that you see on an everyday basis Yep, so there’s there’s quite a few that that stand out the first one I’ll start with would just be head position. So if someone’s swimming and they typically have a sore lower back

Usually they’re going to be looking too far forwards with their head position and head positioning in swimming is a little bit different than what you might have been taught of Several years ago. I used to get taught you you should be looking straight down Like that’s the only place to look but there’s a range You should look at you can look anywhere from straight down to about 45 degrees in in front If you consider looking straight out in front as being 90 degrees. So zero to 45 degrees is kind of where we we want to be and When we do that we want to make sure that you’re lengthening through the back of your neck Like you’re sort of lengthening through your spine And imagine you’ve got good posture when you do it as well Because in that in that position, you’ll generally have good body position. So you’ll have your head and your hips up near the Near the surface there But head positions one that we usually start with because if you’re looking a long way forwards

Your legs are going to drop and then the amount of resistance or drag that that creates It’s very hard to overcome it. So head positions are a really good place to start with and then other people So Brent the people that come to see you I mean you just you just said you’re about your posture in the water now all of my patients think about their posture sitting and standing How many people have actually thought about their posture in the water by the time they come to you? I’d say probably no one unless they’ve heard it in a video that i’ve done or Yeah, they’ve had a coach tell them about it. It’s a funny one Isn’t like you would never really consider posture aside from maybe if you’re walking or You know sitting but yeah, it is so important in in swimming and you probably I mean you’d notice as a as a physio When you’ve got good posture your shoulder blades are in that position where you can Use those stronger muscles through your back and through your shoulders

And it’s the same thing when you swim with the right posture often We’ll find people will hunch over and they’ll round their shoulders in order to try and Power themselves through the water and pull themselves through But it compromises the the position that they’re in so they’re not often using their their lats and their That those muscles between their shoulder blades like upper and lower traps and and rhomboids and those sorts of things It’s hard when they’ve got that poor posture So it’s one of the first things that we cover when we are working with people is have that good posture And if someone is swimming with poor posture like straight away, they notice it They feel like oh, okay, this is actually a lot easier. I’m not feeling like I’m having to muscle my way through the water So it’s it’s not thought about much. But if you get that posture right and head position, right It takes care of like

The most of your body there because then you’ve got this little bit of tautness or tension through your body where You’ll be able to keep fairly stable Through your through your torso and hips and head and that way you’re going to cut through the water So much better than if you’re like a snake zigzagging through the water So those like basic things to get right. It makes a world of difference for those that haven’t got them in place So one more question on head posture then We’ve talked a little bit about open water series up here in Sydney Which would be the same down in Melbourne at the moment, but there’ll also be quite a few pool swimmers who are listening to this So Does my head position differ in the pool compared to an open water where I need to see and get my head above the waves Yeah, so you’re going to be Yeah, you’re going to what a site when you go to the open water So obviously going to look up and then turn your head to the side

So siding you’ve got to do it and your head will lift up then but when you’re not siding just make sure you keep the eye somewhere in that range and It depends on the person. It’s so individual with your head position There’s not one right position for everyone But I often encourage my triathletes and open water swimmers to look somewhere in that upper range Close to 45 because then you’ve got better awareness around what’s happening in front of you If you’re in the ocean you might be able to see someone’s feet if you’re close to them or Now you can sort of see what’s ahead rather than if you’re looking straight down So that’s where I encourage most people to go. So I don’t feel like you have to look straight down because You’ll often feel a bit more comfortable if you can look look slightly forwards and it’s certainly acceptable to be in that sort of range Yeah, okay. So I’ve got my head position right and I’m somewhere between

Directly down to 45 degrees forwards What’s then the next step in trying to build or correct someone’s technique Then another thing we look at is alignment in the water. So I’d say if I add 10 people come to me Five of those will be crossing over when they enter the water So as your arm comes over the top of the water and then your hand goes to enter it That’s what we call the or that’s the entry part of the stroke And about half the swimmers that I see are crossing the center as that hand reaches forwards out in front of them So it crosses the middle of their body So one of the things we want to try and do there is what we call swim on train tracks As in if you imagine you’ve got these train tracks that are in line with your ears Every time you enter the water you want your left hand to enter in line with your left ear And extend straight forwards out in front of you. So you’re following those train tracks

Every time you’re entering and reaching forwards And that way you’ll typically swim a lot straighter than if you’re crossing over And it can get rid of a lot of other faults in the stroke So that’s one of the things that we work with the swimmers who come to our clinics in the beginning is just Getting on those train tracks and and swimming straight Because yeah things just are a lot easier When you when you do that and the funny thing about that is if you do crossover And the way you can tell that is if you look forwards when you swim Have a look and see what your arms are doing as you’re reaching forwards And if they are crossing over and it’s it’s really common Then try to correct it to get them on those train tracks But when you go to change it if you were crossing over you’ve often got to exaggerate it to the point where you don’t believe You should be that wide like it’s like you probably see in like

Any sort of practice that you do that proprioception Sometimes isn’t great So we have to have swimmers just swim in a way where they feel like this cannot possibly be the correct thing to do but it’s just it’s because it’s different than what they’ve done for perhaps many years and Yeah, they get used to it after a couple of weeks But sometimes we have to get them to stretch those boundaries of what they think they should be doing Because it’s just different than what they used to and um takes a while to get used to it Yeah, absolutely. And so for all those listeners Who don’t know what proprioception is proprioception is about your body’s awareness of where it is in space So, you know, you might think that you’re not crossing over which brenton’s just described and then brenton shows you a video and you’re crossing right over So your Now left hand is getting in line with your right shoulder by the time I take the water and that’s

I suppose that’s the value of video analysis for technique. Like whether we’re talking Swimming or tennis or golf or or anything like you just need some feedback outside of your own body because you can Convince yourself that you’re doing something you’re not quite doing can’t you? Oh, absolutely. And it’s the thing about getting video, especially for swimming. A lot of people will They think about and go, uh, I don’t really want to see myself either in bathers Or I don’t want to see what my stroke looks like because like I don’t think it’s going to look pretty And so there’s a bit of hesitation there But I think it’s just like ripping off a bandaid might hurt a little bit at the start But it is it’s just worth doing because you can have such a huge benefit and improvement Once you actually just take a look at how you’re swimming and it’s kind of like When I went to um, I went to Kaiser maybe two or three months ago when I first started there. I did some testing and I was

One of the like internal external shoulder rotation. I did some testing there and um, I thought like yeah, swimmer. I’m gonna be pretty good at this I did the testing and it was embarrassing. I was like Like 40th percentile whatever it was like it was it was pathetic And I had an excuse hadn’t swum for a while because of lockdowns and stuff But let’s be honest. I probably wouldn’t change things much But once I actually, you know, I found out how poor I was with it Then I could get to work and start improving it and it was you know start improving a lot from where it was So rip that bandaid off And that’s one of the reasons that we wanted to have you on this podcast Brent And it is your approach to uh being database and being objective because a really big part of our philosophy at Kaiser is You know test things work out where they’re at and then try and address them, but Well, I look after heaps of golfers as well. So golf’s a really common sport. Um, just like swimming is for my patients

But golfers as soon as they go to their golf pro They’re on a video straight away and the golf pros, you know, drawing lines and they’re doing track man And there’s they’re looking at different angles Do you reckon it is just the idea of seeing yourself in Swimmers that people don’t want to do video analysis with swimming or is it Less known or why doesn’t everyone just accept it when they do in golf? Uh, I think it’s partly partly that like that under The underwater shot from the side like if anyone’s sort of self-conscious about their their body It’ll sometimes I can put them off a bit, but like no one really no one really cares about That, you know, if other people are sort of watching watching it. Um, but I think it’s just like It exposes that you’ve got areas to improve and sometimes if you’ve done something for a long time, you’ve Been happy with it. You know, you can it’s easy to just continue on that path

So I think that’s that’s part of it. It’s like knowing that you might not be perfect with where you are and it might mean it’s going to open you up to Something different that you might have to do and uh, yeah, so change change can feel hard sometimes So that’s that’s where I think it It comes from but then I do have a lot of athletes who come to me who they’re like I know something’s not right And I just want to fix it like just to help me because what I’m doing right now is hard And it’s not fast and there’s got to be a solution to it. So, you know, sometimes it’s about Being in a in a place where you just you’re not satisfied with it. Then you’re much more willing to Uh, yeah to take that step whereas if things that things are okay, it’s not enough of a frustration for you to Take that next step sometimes. Yeah, it’s a good point. So I imagine by the time I’ve corrected my head position and my arms are on train tracks that I’m creating a lot less drag in the water

I’m swimming a little bit faster. There’s a little bit less load on on all of my joints because I’m not fighting the whole time Um, what’s the next step that you look at in technique correction? Yep, well then

There’s there’s quite a few things that we do look at but the next Primary thing that we will often want to improve with people is their catch and pull And you can just think of that as what are your arms doing when they’re in the water? So the catch is like the first Third roughly first third of when the arm moves through the water and then the pool would be the rest of it And one of the most important things that we Want to work on is what we call a high elbow catch And I was talking about the high elbow catch because if you do any reading on swimming technique It’s on the first things that you come up and usually there’ll be a video of brenton ford associated with it

But uh, just describe everyone for everyone the high elbow catch Yep, so the high elbow catch in another Kind of term for it is early vertical forearm EVF You might see that come up if you look at it online and they’re not bad ways to describe it but I think it tends to confuse people a bit and get them trying to do the wrong thing so The the high elbow catch doesn’t mean that your elbows should be high in the water up near the surface That’s not what a high elbow catch is. It’s just this position in the water where Your arms out in front your fingers are pointing down and we want to have our elbow Forward almost like forwards. So our hand and forearm Is is sort of vertical in a way not completely vertical, but it’s it’s in that sort of direction So then your hand and forearm is angled in a way to press back against the water So it’s a little difficult to describe on a on a podcast. I’m much better working with video, obviously, but

Um The heart yeah with the high elbow high elbow catch to me. That’s the the 20% of the stroke That can give you 80% of the results or improvement for a lot of people So it’s a really important part of the stroke to get right And it’s not something that will happen overnight if you haven’t got it At the moment it certainly takes some practice But it’s a skill that really that it’s worth focusing on if you feel like you haven’t got much propulsion in the water And like when you move your arms not much is happening Yeah, getting that catch sorted is a is a really key one to to do and uh, yeah High elbow is an elbow near the surface. So don’t try and Pull through really shallow. It’s what I used to do as a kid. I thought oh high elbow Okay, it must mean up there without any understanding of it. Um, so it’s no wonder I didn’t get faster No, we’re trying to do that I guess for people listening the alternative one of the alternatives possibly would be

You know trying to swim with a completely straight arm the whole time And so your hand would end up really deep in the water and you’d be trying to use your whole arm for propulsion As opposed to predominantly your hand and forearm, which is what you’re describing Yeah, that’s right. Actually not a good way to to think of it is We want to avoid it What would be a dropped elbow catch where the elbow is quite quite low in the water And if you think of driving a car most people if you’ve got your 10 and 2 position with your hands on the steering wheel The elbows will be down sort of near your ribs somewhere down here there That’s like a dropped elbow position If you’re doing that similar position when you are swimming and so we want to go in the opposite direction So instead of having that 10 and 2 position imagine you’re like a like a p-plate up Driving down the main street trying to show off in front of people. You’ve got your elbow up in the in the other direction

That’s kind of what we want to do for our high elbow catch So it’s like a a p-plate driving position when we get that catch and that will get the hand and forearm in the right right position It’s a great description. There’s going to be plenty of people in the pool In the next couple of days thinking about driving a probably a vn commodore

Down the street when they’re 19 with a p-plate on and I imagine most yeah Like most of the people I work with they’re well past that the p-plate stage But you know, it’s okay to revisit that sometimes and get back to your childhood a little bit Renton I’ve got a couple of specific questions And I imagine you would get these all the time where people would say, you know, I’ve got shoulder pain

When I swim, uh, how do I fix my technique? And so I don’t quite want to ask that question because I’ve been asked it too many times myself and I think it’s unfair but as a as a generalization, um I imagine shoulder injury is a pretty common thing that you see and when someone does have a shoulder injury What do you look at as a coach? What are some of the things that people might be able to start doing? Yeah, there’s there’s probably two key ones that I’ve I see all the time and when people come to me and they say I’ve got a sore left shoulder Uh, I just I don’t know if it’s technique or not. Yeah, there’s two things that tend to stand out there When we look at it on the video It’s really obvious why they’ve got a sore shoulder because if you’re swimming like most people you might do one or two or three thousand meters at a time and that’s several thousand strokes or repetitions of the same movement and one of those things is

When people, uh, come over the water sometimes they’ll have their hand I think the best way to describe it their hand when it goes to enter will be up quite high and the elbow will be low so their uh, their hand is well behind their their head as they go to enter and that can cause a lot of Like it sort of jams up there up through their rotator cuff a little bit when the hand is So, yeah that up there and I know we’re on video here, but that’s sort of position We’re both with our hands up above our head at the moment trying to look at what each other’s point Which is not helpful to anyone at this point

so the So what we want to try to do when we enter the water is we should enter fingertips first And have at at that point have our elbow just above the water And then when you do enter and you’re reaching forwards try and get the hand down to about the same depth depth as your shoulder When you’re reaching forwards in front So that’s where we want to be but if we pause that with a lot of some as their hand is like up near the surface And sometimes above the water as well because only their elbow has entered and their hand hasn’t yet And so that’s a really uncomfortable position because those overhead movements As you know, you know that’s strong there and it’s just it’s not great for the shoulder So that’s one so we want to try and just make sure that they enter fingers first and then get the hand down to the shoulder depth Yeah From a physios perspective that position where you’ve got your elbow potentially entering the water first and your hand above it

is a end of range position for your shoulder and As a summary for most of your body your body doesn’t like Either being in an end of range position for a long time or going into an end of range position repetitively so that Dive or where you enter with your fingers first Makes a huge it’s a subtle but huge difference for your shoulder where it’s not taking it to the end of its range And dashing it against the wall all the time So I mean, even though i’m not a swimming coach, I can probably give some you know, biomechanical Background as to why that that would definitely cause shoulder pain makes sense Yeah, that’s that’s perfect because I like to hear it from your end as well because I I see it and I can help correct it but then You know as As what you do, what’s that? What does that mean for you? So that’s that’s interesting and that makes a lot of sense and the other one is

people over being too trying to overpower the The catch from from that position as well So when they’re on their side, they’re reaching forwards as they go to then start the the catch so start the hand moving Some people will try and do that with too much force straight away So again, they’re in that end of range position and they’re trying to muscle their way through that next part and As you said, it’s that end of range position. So you sort of compromise a little bit You’re not that strong and the thing about is you don’t really get that much extra You don’t get any extra speed from trying to rip hard when you’re there because I think of the catch. So that first Quarter first third as the setup phase when your hand’s moving through the water then after that as your hand is

Almost going underneath your shoulder there. That’s more the power phase and it shows when we actually look at when we measure the power of Of good swimmers is that’s where they apply the most force is like just in front of their shoulder and And sort of under that part. So use the catch as the setup phase and not the power phase Yeah, so don’t go too hard too early. So it’s they’re the they’re the main ones where we see injuries happening But that that’s super interesting. I’m definitely guilty of that second one Particularly on my left hand side. I feel like my left hand side’s a little bit weaker than my right. I’m right handed So I’m always thinking in my catch phase. I’ll just pull a little bit harder And I definitely am guilty of pulling from what you’ve just described a little bit too early in in that catch phase and it probably To be honest, it probably causes some irritations my shoulder I’m going to write that down and take note of that and and try that when I’m

Summing a point to point with the the bond I sold easiest Friday morning Yeah, that’s interesting. It’s interesting, isn’t it? So and the other thing about that too is if you’re Out the front and you’re going hard Initially, you’re only going to be pushing down on the water with your hand and forearm So you haven’t quite got the hand and forearm angling back behind you So that’s the other reason we don’t really want to want to do it And you don’t want to be completely like boosts and relaxed with it You still need that little bit of and pressure with it. But uh, yeah, I want to back it off a bit Make complete sense because I imagine that everything in the swimming stroke is about trying to create forwards propulsion So if I’m just if I’m putting a lot of power when my palms facing down and it’s not creating any forwards propulsion I mean, not only is it too much load on my shoulder. It’s probably wasted energy as well

Yeah, yeah, exactly right and there’s one more that Comes to mind. I see it less often, but it can certainly cause some shoulder irritation is the recovery So when the arm comes over the top of the water we want to You a pretty common way to Think of that recovery as a high elbow recovery So you’ve got your high elbow catch which is in the water Another thing that coaches will talk about is like high elbow with your recovery Uh, all the way. I think of that is your elbow So the point of your elbow should be pointing mostly up to the sky as your arm comes over the top of the water Some people who aren’t coming over correctly their elbow will point behind them So almost towards where their feet would be as they come through and if you think about being in a horizontal position Uh, so on your side a little bit but with that elbow pointing behind you Very limited with your range and it’s again Just that rotator cuff it gets gets smashed as it goes through there

So that’s why we need to get that elbow pointing up and it’s just much much easier So that’s another one that can can cause it and it’s pretty common to see people Recovering with that elbow pointing behind them instead So we just need to get them to almost lead within the elbow Or think of like the efforts coming from the elbow as your arm comes over the top of the water And that will allow your hand and for them to relax a little bit as you come through Whereas if you feel like The arm’s coming over because of the hand like that tensions through the hand that often causes the elbow to point behind you

Shoulder injuries must be really common in swimming the other one I get a lot So one more question before we we Pause this podcast and go to our second one about or about training principles

Low back pain and technique Brenton Low back pains most common can musculoskeletal condition in Australia Swimmers aren’t going to avoid it. Although it is a very good exercise for people who do have low back pain So what have you got to tell us about lower back pain and swimming? Yeah, you’re probably you normally find it with open water swimmers more than a pool swimmer because they’ve got to look out To site so it’s really common there. So it’s often Either from looking too far forwards when you swim normally or it can just be from that that sighting So it can be a little bit hard to avoid if you are going open water because you’ve obviously got to lift up but the way I would try to reduce that pain or that Pressure through the the lower back is when you do sight, which is just when you’re looking forwards at where you’re going Try to first of all do the sight and breathe method of of sighting If you look up sight and breathe effortless swimming, there’s a video on youtube that that will explain it

But basically it’s like it when you do want to look forwards look up on one stroke And on the next stroke turn your head to the side to breathe Instead of maybe having your head up for two or three strokes Which is just a longer time in that position and it’s just it’s hard to work So you want to make sure you’re sighting the right way So sight and breathe is the easiest way to do it and secondly try and get that the head up by lifting through your chest rather than Perhaps keeping everything sort of straight and your hips have to drop all that pressure Going into the the lower back there So you want to sort of like arch through the the chest a bit more To take some of that that pressure off as you do look forwards

Yeah, and for people who are sitting down all day and then they go out as their sport Swimming as their sport. I imagine that Thoracic extension, which is what you just described as lifting up through your chest Like that becomes more and more of a challenge for people brexit. Thank you so much for your tips on technique For everyone who’s listening Stay tuned to our next episode have a listen to Brent and talk about some of the training principles Find out which pair of goggles you need to wear Whether you should be wearing a wetsuit or rolling out in your budgie smugglers How many times a week you need to train and also How you mix strength training with swimming training as well

The post Back to Basics with Brenton Ford (Kieser Podcast: Healthy to 100) appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Chris Natterer from Ultraworking. He is a Lead Product Manager at Ultraworking.com. In this episode, Chris will talk about what we can do to be more productive to make sure we stick to habits and also to talk about nutrition as well. All of these things tie in really well in what we do. my job is to help people be consistent with their swimming but also change their motor patterns and develop different muscle memories which really comes down to sticking to habits. So I thought this would be a good topic to talk about and why not get someone who is experienced in that area to chat about it.

01:05 Ultraworking Background
02:27 Implementing Best Practices (Work Cycle)
10:12 Debriefing
11:28 Reason Behind 30 minute Time Cycle
14:12 “Very Easy Not To Do Planning”
17:16 Consistency
23:15 Baseline and Stretch Goal
32:00 Joint Health
36:28 Nutrition

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Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Chris Nattera from Ultra Working. And Chris here is here to talk about what we can do to be more productive, to make sure we stick to habits, and also to talk a bit about nutrition as well. And I think all of these things tie in really well with what we do, which I see myself as a coach, as a swim coach. My job is to help people be consistent with their swimming, but also change their motor patterns and develop this different muscle memory, which really comes down to sticking to habits. That’s the way they’re going to do it. So I thought this would be a really good topic to talk about and why not get someone who’s experienced in that area to chat about it.

So Chris, welcome to the podcast. Hey Brenton, nice to have you. Thank you. So Chris, those that are listening, give me a bit of a background on what you’ve done in the past. And I guess a bit about Ultra Working as well, because I was listening to the Ultra Working podcast and these are some really interesting topics, not only in terms of being productive and increasing that, but also just in the area of I guess psychology and how that works into sticking to habits or changing habits and those sorts of things. Right. So I’m an engineer. I used to work for many years as a health coach, looking at the whole spectrum from nutrition to fitness and general health, getting a lot of blood work done with my clients. And now I work at Ultra Working. We are a company that focuses a lot on making people perform better in their jobs. Making them more productive, giving them the right tools to excel and perform better and produce better work.

And we’re also now starting to look at health as it is a absolutely fundamental piece of the puzzle for long term peak performance. Yeah, absolutely. It’s like, if you haven’t got your health, you’ve got, you haven’t really, nothing else really matters. You know, you need to make sure that you’re healthy in order to then be able to do your work, then to be able to swim. So I think it’s obviously a pretty key component to it. And with since you’ve joined Ultra Working and this has become a real focus, is there anything that you’ve personally changed in how you work, how you train from what you’ve learned over the last couple of years? Yeah, so it’s interesting because I was a Ultra Working customer for many years before I joined up and it is exactly the things that I saw and that I was able to implement in my own life that convinced me of the ability of all of the things that we’re doing. So yes, there’s a lot to uncover. So there are definitely some, there are some best practices when it comes to doing work, or really when it comes to participating in almost any kind of activity.

And these best practices are sort of well known. We, you know, we can measure them, but it’s actually surprising that even very, very accomplished people do not use them or do not use all of them consistently. And so we’re helping our, our customers to implement some of those habits or some of those practices more consistently. So for example, one of the main things that we do is a is a tool that will help you to perform a single work session better. It’s called work cycles. It’s very popular. And it helps you to run a work session in a more strategic systematic way. So very often people will sit down to do work, and they will sort of just jump in. They don’t really have a clear outcome in mind, what they’re actually trying to accomplish and how they will get there is sort of just like go with the flow. And, well, you can get things done this way, but they usually tend to a take a lot longer than you might have otherwise taken. And you’re often not really.

There are many questions you can ask yourself before jumping into the work that will inform a lot of the outcomes that you’re trying to go for. So let’s say you’re writing a paper, you could ask yourself, you could just like start writing the paper, but questions that you could ask yourselves are who’s going to read this. Who am I writing this for? What do I want them to take away when they have read this paper? What, what do I want them to, to learn from this and depending on how you answer those questions, the way you approach the paper or the actual outcome of the paper could look very differently. So, some of the things that we do in a work cycle is we have a planning session upfront takes around five minutes if you’re if you’re a veteran takes maybe 10 to 15 minutes if you’re just getting started. And during those planning session you will ask yourself, what am I trying to accomplish for the next four hours for example for this next work session.

The second question is, how is this important and valuable. We find that motivation is one of the things that can really make a huge difference and just field you’re basically really trying to see how even the, it could even be a very mundane exercise or very mundane work that you’re doing, but in this field you have the chance to reframe it in a way that makes it highly, you know, exciting. So, let’s say you’re just doing your taxes. You could, you know, reframe this in. Okay, if I get this done and I will, you know, I will feel liberated I will feel this off my chest, or I might actually establish a process to make it easier next year, and to think about my systems going forward. There are many possible answers. Then you are in the next piece, you’re trying to do some, you’re preparing for things that might go wrong. So, for example, if you’re, you know, working on something that might be requires a lot of, of concentration, you might ask yourself hey what could, are there any interruptions that are coming up.

I’m expecting someone to knock on the door. And if that happens, how will I address it. How will I deal with the situation, and you write into this field for example if the, you know, the delivery guy shows up, I will, you know, prevent the door I will take this stuff bring into the kitchen and I will go right back to work. And those are kind of similar to maybe you’re familiar with the term, or the concept of implementation intentions. If, if I do this, I will do this when X happens, you sort of pre planning your response. And then you’re, you’re, you know, roughly gauging, is this an objective or is objective work, is this something that you can actually measure, and you’re defining in great detail, how will you know when this is complete. And this is the concept that Stephen Covey wrote, writes about in seven habits of highly effective people, one of the most, you know, well known books. He has the concept of starting with the end in mind, like knowing the end result that you’re trying to achieve.

And I think this is maybe the most important field, knowing actually what the end result of your work is supposed to look like. There’s a lot of good things there. And the first one that you mentioned about, it’s almost like sharpening the axe before you’re going to chop down a tree. It’s like, that’s that planning about what, what I actually want to get out of this work that I’m about to do. Who’s going to be reading or who’s going to be watching it. And what do I want to get across or what am I trying to teach us like that? Yes, it’s the sharpening of the axe there. Because without that, then you might waste an extra hour or an extra two hours and how you might translate that to swimming. It’s like, I’m going to the pool. I’ve got this session. What’s, what am I trying to get out of it? Is there a particular aspect of my technique that I’m trying to change? And then how will I go about changing it?

Will I use some different drills? What will be my focus in the main set? So that sort of pre, like even five or 10 minutes of just sitting down thinking about what, what you would like to get out of it can make a big difference. And I know, I think to the days where I’m most productive, it’s when I’ve sat down, I’ve written down what are the top three things that I want to have done by the end of today. And, and then it’s like that small act of just sitting down and writing that and then thinking about how I’m going to approach. And it’s like, I can be, I can more than two to three times more productive when I, when I actually just take that five or 10 minutes. Absolutely. I totally agree. That’s, that’s how it translates because yeah, this is for sure true for any type of physical practice as well. This sort of deliberate practice knowing exactly what I’m trying to accomplish, not just that you can get better if you just jump in the pool and swim a lot.

But you will get much, much better, much faster if you also really engage your, your mental state at the same time. And one component that then comes to it. So we have just planned for hours of work. That’s like a rough cycle. And then we’re going to start work and we’re working in 30 minute blocks. And we repeat this planning process in a little bit of a smaller version for each block, we are planning mapping out what you’re trying to accomplish in the next 30 minutes. And this does two things that will keep us on target. Once again, we have to come or establish what finish will look like. But it will also teach us the skill of estimating how long things take. And now we’re working for 30 minutes. And at the end of the 30 minutes comes the next, now it’s a really critical part, which is to debrief. I think this is something that people too often do not do because it can really easily reveal some things.

So after a good training session, you could ask yourself, what really went well today? What did I learn today that I could repeat the next time? Things like that. And all of a sudden you have really sped up the cycle of getting more data, making a change to your next training session, getting more data, analyzing the data and changing the next training session again. And basically in work cycles, you have that chance every 30 minutes. Every 30 minutes you debrief, you ask yourself, did I hit my target? If not, why not? And what can I do better next time and what went well this time? And so the goal is not to just get a lot of more work done, but to increasingly become better at working. And why the 30 minute time cycle? Is there a particular reason around that? So some people like 50 minutes, 40 minutes, 30 minutes is a good compromise between different type of attention spans. Depending on the type of work, you would maybe increase this, but our standard protocol is 30 minutes of work followed by 10 minutes of a break.

That’s what I’ve tried to usually stick to when I’m running clinics. Especially with when there’s a lot of information that I might be trying to get across. Any more than 30 minutes where you’re just sitting there, maybe hearing someone talk for 30 minutes, after that 30 minute mark, I find the attention seems to wane and your mind will start to drift off a bit. So at a bare minimum, we’ll want to get up, walk around, move around, reset, and then we can go on to the next portion of it. So I think it’s a really good time frame because you can work longer obviously. But I know personally too, when you’re sitting at a computer, I would highly doubt that most people are fully productive for a 60 minute block. It’s that 30 minutes where you can attack it, you can do it, and then it’s probably going to start to drop off after that. So if you were to take a break in between, then you’re just ready to go.

If you had even just four 30 minute blocks, I reckon in your day, I’m thinking of myself actually like, boy, I could get a lot done if they were fully productive, no distractions. And I think when I when I’ve sort of debriefed about whether it’s about what worked well in our clinics, what has worked well in a work day, often it’s like, I’ll reflect and be like, all right, phone was in the other room. That’s the stuff in the first thing. And then, you know, I’ve set a time limit for how long I need to be there. That way I’ve got this imaginary deadline and that’s helped a lot too. So there’s a few things that often come out of that debrief. Yeah, it’s, it’s pretty impressive what you can achieve in a few hours of like really highly concentrated work versus, you know, work where you’re just at 60%. Regarding the time spans, there are certain activities, for example, certain programmers depending on what they’re working on, they will need a little bit longer to get into that zone and for them it might make sense to,

you know, increase the time, but for most of the tasks that we work on with 30 minutes is a really good timeframe. And in terms of the psychology of this sort of stuff is there, things that you’ve learned along the way that you’ve found to be useful or maybe mistakes that you’ve seen people slipping into, and they’ve been able to change the way they go about something. Yes, so, so I mean, there are certain things that you see over and over again that people really quickly address. And I had the same things when I went in I, I was actually sort of shocked how sloppy I often was in the definition, or my clarity of the work, I would, you know, like, as I said, you will work a long time, but you’re not really getting to the core of the issue very quickly. And just general the realization how valuable this type of deep work is, and then putting a lot of different protections around deep work. I know that some of your guests in the past have mentioned things like, you know, blocking social media.

This is something that you will find a lot of people do in this type of community. I usually have some form of app running at all time that will prevent me from accessing websites that I find distracting during work hours or even for longer periods of time. That has helped a lot, putting the phone in. I actually have a little box here that you can put your phone in and it locks and your phone is trapped in there for a certain amount of time. It’s one of those things where it’s surprisingly effective and you feel a little bit silly, but it is so effective. But other things is, yeah, I mean, planning is planning is one of those things that when we do it is extremely effective and extremely helpful, but it’s very easy not to do it. And I think there’s a surprising finding maybe from for me or for us that like really, really, you know, high level performers, researchers finishing their PhD, even, you know, people on that level often will not do continuous or like regular simple planning.

Before we’re talking about high level people in say business, CEOs or in academics with PhDs and then with high level sportsmen, there’s often some very similar traits that will be common and seen amongst those different groups. And you said that a lot of people that you have gotten to know through ultra work, like they are quite into sports and those sorts of things. And I say it with like how you do one thing is typically how you do everything else. And, you know, if you’re high up, if you’re a really good operator in one area, you’re good in others. So I think that sort of crosses over to all aspects of your of your life. And you’re talking earlier to about you call it the pentathlon that you’re running at the moment with with some people from ultra work. And what you’re looking to do is to get into operate at a really good level in lots of different aspects of their of their life. Can you talk a bit about that?

Because I think it’s interesting that obviously nutrition plays a part with helping people work better and then making sure you get enough sleep helps people. You know, that all works together. So can you talk a bit about that that challenge that you’re doing with everybody? So we call it the pentathlon. It’s an event. It’s it’s styled as a competition. And it goes for around two weeks. And people join up and they’re being put into teams. And for the next two weeks, they are being rated, they’re being scored on five different categories. They’re being scored on nutrition, on fitness, on sleep, on planning and ultimately on doing their most important work. And what this competition really focuses on. Some people, you know, put up really, really impressive hours and some people go on like really amazing fitness regimes for those two weeks and and really push themselves. I generally advise and this is what most people do to not necessarily go for like the most crazy, you know, levels in each of these categories, but the goal is consistency.

We’re trying to put two weeks get people to be very consistent across those five categories. So nutrition, you will pick something that is, you know, maybe a diet that you’ve done before that you feel comfortable with, you know will not be extremely taxing on your on your willpower. But if you go to it for two weeks, fitness, you will not necessarily try and you exercise regime but you do something that you’ve done before. That is, you know, somewhat challenging for you, but not overly and you stick to it for two weeks. And people can we give them full flexibility in what good fitness will meet mean for them for those two weeks. And it’s, it’s, it’s up to them it’s not up to us. If you’re planning, we want you to do some form of planning every day. Then sleep. We find actually that much more important than your wake up time is your bedtime. So we really try to get people for those two weeks to hit very consistent bad times.

For me personally, once I started doing that, that was the most surprising finding after doing the better on myself, how important a consistent bedtime was for my performance the next day and for the way I felt. And then lastly is your most important work. So often people will bring a project that they, you know, can roughly complete in two weeks. And we want them to define upfront what their most important work is. And here is an interesting, interesting concept. The way we score it is each of these categories gets 100 points. The work part is scored twice one for consistency one for them for amounts. So basically with the first 10 minutes of your most important work, you will get 100 points. And with an additional 90 minutes, you will get another 100 points. And basically what we’re trying to do here is we find that projects do not die because you didn’t work on them for like four hours every day.

Projects or any type of endeavor really dies because it didn’t get done at all for two weeks. And this is true. I would say for, you know, becoming a great swimmer becoming like, you know, getting in shape in general sticking to a diet. And it’s not necessarily being like super intense for a week that will get you the result it’s putting in consistent work, you know, day over day week over week. And this is what the pentathlon is styled upon people really like it. It’s cool it has this team dynamic that makes a huge component. People don’t want to let down their teammates, because at the end the teams are like ranked and scored against each other. It’s a fun thing that we do multiple times a year. That’s like that. It’s the thing that really appeals to me there is that ability to be consistent with those things. So don’t go out and try and run 20 Ks every day and succeed there because you’re probably not going to sustain that across or when the two weeks is over.

And it’s what I see with swimming is in order to improve your technique. If you do a little bit every single day or every single time you’re swimming, like a little bit of the drills that we might prescribe people and then keep your attention on it through the set. That’s what’s going to change a stroke because if you do two hours of a technique session once every three weeks, you’re not going to have that consistency to actually make any change to your stroke. It’s just a little bit over time is what will help you get there. And it’s very easy to overdo it, especially this time of year. At the start of a new year, people might have their fitness goals and they might go out and swim a 10 K swim and overdo it and then maybe get injured or maybe just go home exhausted and they’ll need to rest up. So you often better off to just do something that you could do every day and that’s going to carry forwards a lot better.

And I get the appeal of wanting to go all out. I do it all the time. I still make that mistake. But yeah, if you can have that consistency, it makes such a difference. There is another concept that is interesting that also I think transfers pretty well to training. We often work with baseline and stretch goals. We often encourage people to have a sort of minimum goal that they’re trying to achieve. And if it goes well, then they can aim for their stretch goal. And I’ve applied this to my training on days where I don’t really, really feel, feel fully on. I have a baseline training that I can default to that I’m comfortable with that I think will get me the results, but that is very hard for me to miss. And so even on, you know, even a day that might not be optimal, I can still get that minimum amount of training. And it’s just a huge difference. Like it’s a zero to one. Like did you train or did you not train in the end that applies to many things.

Yeah, that’s good. I like that. That’s something I should have done. At the start of the year, for the first seven days of this year, I ran 10K every day. And then on the sixth day, I was surfing and I sort of went for a turn and I hurt my knee when I was surfing. And then I was like, no, I’m going to run the next day. And so I ran 10K still and I knew I shouldn’t have because I was like, this isn’t going to be good. And then I hadn’t been able to run since. Whereas if I’d perhaps just said, all right, one K, you know, that’s my like minimum goal. Then I could have gone, I’ll do okay. I still feel like I’m ticking the box. And then I’d probably still be running. So it’s a really good. Yeah. It’s a good idea to have that minimum goal. And I mean, same thing could go for swimming. Whereas if you set yourself, I’m going to go three times a week. You might normally do about 2K. But if you set the minimum as all right, the minimum I’m going to do is 500.

Then you’re still going to the pool. You’re still getting, getting wet and feel like you’ve had some sort of. Win and you’re still stuck to those, those three sessions because in the past, I know there’s been sessions where I’ve just might be fatigued. And I’m like, I don’t feel like going, but usually when I go or if I don’t want to go, I say, all you got to do is 500 meters. And then you can get out if you want. Typically I’ll stick around longer because I’m like, well, I’m here now and actually feel pretty good. So yeah, even just having on the back in mind, I think can help. Right. But I think this is also what you just mentioned is basically, I think a pretty common finding and psychology. I think maybe BJ Falk was the person who coined the concept of tiny habits. And I think there are things like, you know, if you just, if you stick to doing one push up every day, it’s the getting started part.

So once you’re in the pool, we went through all of the hard part, you’re in the pool already now doing 200 kilometers versus 500 meters is basically the same thing. It’s like minimally much harder than the first part. It’s getting you into the pool. And so having something where, you know, people, if they can develop a running habit, they can start with every day I want to put on my shoes and step in front of the house. And if I don’t feel like doing it, I can just step right back in. But eventually that brings the, there’s a concept that behavior actually precedes motivation. So you can establish the behavior first, you can sort of, you know, maneuver yourself into the behavior. And then the, the feeling, the psychology will actually follow as a result of that. So you will like, you will start liking the behavior that you have, that you started doing mechanically upfront. A quick note from our sponsor.

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And then you can review all of the details of your swim. And you can see what other swimmers are up to in the form swim community as well. I’m a big fan of these goggles. I was really impressed when I use them and I use them for a vast majority of the sessions that I’m currently doing. To find out more about the form swim goggles, go to formswim.com. And you can use our coupon code effortless at checkout and save $15 off your order. Back to the podcast. Yeah, it’s like it’s funny when you think about it. Like even like the smallest amount of resistance to or even the smallest activity can feel like something hard to do. But if it’s like, all you got to do is put your runners on and step out the door. And then if you want to turn around, you can. So most of us can can put our runners on and walk out the door and then you’ve got decision to make whether you keep going. So little ways to almost trick the mind into doing the thing that we want to do because so much of it is just psychological.

And if we can have these little ways to get us to get into the habit, then it’s going to help. And I think once that habit is established, it’s hard to stop doing it. And I think of as a teenager when we odd swim eight, nine sessions a week and with like it’s just it was granted every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings. It’s like that’s the days we train. And so there’s just no question about it. So you get up, go to the pool and you do it. There’s no like, but you know, I don’t feel well. It’s just you get up and do it because you’re in that habit and do it for years. And then it’s almost hard to break that habit. You want to because you feel like, well, I’m doing it now. And the not normal thing to do is to not go to the pool. Right. How’s your knee doing by the way now? And is your are you healing up? It’s, it’s almost there. Almost there. I went for one and a half days the other day and it was a bit sore.

So I’m just, I’m just rowing instead, but it feels okay then. But yeah, it’s I deserve it. Basically, I should like, I knew I should have done that 10 Ks at the time. I was like, Oh, this, this isn’t good, but I just wanted to keep it going. But yeah, that’s a, that’s all right. It’ll, it’ll get there. And the main thing is I can still swim. Okay. That’s so if we want to touch on something related to, to actually, you know, exercise physiology, I think joint health is one of the things that I’m 36 now, you know, I remember exactly what it was like to be 20. And I just had to, I paid zero attention to anything like joints or connective tissue. I would just put the heaviest weights on and I would always recover. I would never get injured. Everything would be fine. As you get a little bit older, this starts to change. And I think the area where I would say have the made the most. My, my, my information level has changed the most.

I’m the most surprised actually everything to do with how to maintain your joints as you, as you age and also just as you are, you know, training, pencil goes up. I think, you know, most professional athletes will have some form of joint pain once they’re done with the career because that’s where, where it’s the most taxing. And you mentioned that you had some, some new issues and I’ve had some new issues in the past. So maybe we can go into that a little bit. Yeah. Well, you, you were saying that you’re like your background’s in, well, like you’ve got a health background and heavily focused on nutrition at the moment. So what, and you also mentioned before the call that you’ve been doing similar form of training as the keys of training that we had on with it with a guest recently. So what a, let’s talk about some of those things for joint health because I think for some is really important, particularly shoulder, I’d say a good probably 10 to 20% of the students that I

see clinics have had or got some sort of shoulder or joint pain when they swim. And often it is related to technique or overuse or just not doing the strength exercises to be able to keep their shoulder in the right position when they swim. So there’s a couple of things there. So this being probably closer to your background and then what are, what are some things that people can do around joint health? Yes. So one thing that I find highly surprising is when I grew up and we got into, I got introduced to strength training. There was a lot of movements were taught in a way where you would stay clear from certain positions of the joints. So that the knee, for example, you would get told to not put your knees over your toes when you squatted. And you basically, you know, didn’t go below 90 degrees many times. You saw many people doing it. And then for shoulder, for example, you would be very careful when doing bench press, not to go too deep or when

doing a dip, you would stop and maybe also perform this exercise just to 90 degrees. And then for certain, you know, pushing movements, you would maybe not push with your shoulders behind your head. And all this in a hope to put less strain on the knee and or less strain on the particular joint and therefore like prevented from damaging. And what I think has come out over the last few years is that this is actually completely the opposite way we should think about. We tend to often train these joints just in these very static positions, the safe positions. We don’t train them in the extreme positions. And there are a lot of, this is I think more and more people are switching and or moving in the direction a little bit really understanding that to maintain healthy joints, we need to use them and move them over their complete range of motion. This is true for shoulders. This is particularly true in my and my experience for the

knees. And I make it a substantial part of my training now as I get older, you will always like when we look at general fitness, you know, you ask yourself, what will give me the most the most incremental benefits is it going to be to become stronger. And I would say for most particularly men that carry a lot of muscle mass actually mobility is the one thing that gets them much more quality of life than becoming stronger or faster. Yeah, that’s what I and it needs almost like a car needs some, you know, like you need to play the mechanic and put some actual maintenance time into those parts. Yeah, yeah. So I’ve started to really notice that and feel that over the last few years and looking ahead for the next 10, 20, 30 years, I look at the things that I enjoy, which is swimming, surfing, love running, love all those sorts of things. If I can’t do those, then it’s I’m going to be pretty disappointed. So if if I can keep healthy enough to be able to

continue doing those, then that’s got to be the highest priority because to me that’s a huge, huge part of my life. So it’s a good thing about swimming too is it’s it’s usually pretty low impact and people can continue to do it. I’ve seen people in their hundreds still swimming. Nancy in her nineties and she still swims three times a week. So yeah, that’s that’s a really good goal. And I’m glad it’s it’s a sport that I that I enjoy and I can see myself doing it doing it forever. Let’s talk a bit about nutrition. So for me, I think nutrition is one of those things that yes, we absolutely want to get it right. But the hardest thing to do is if we haven’t got a plan in place or we haven’t perhaps had our shopping for the week when we’re hungry and there’s no good options available, that’s when we will resort to the easy option, which is sometimes not the healthiest option and and not the best option for us. So I think just having making that stuff easy

is really crucial. And yeah, and so and so that to me, that’s always the hardest thing is making sure that you’ve you’ve sort of planned your week or your day out in advance. So you you mentioned before you got on the call a bit about what you’re doing there with with ultra work. And do you want to talk a little bit about about that and I guess why that’s why that’s a reason as a as a thing to get on top of and something you guys are working on now. Right. Yeah, so we were mentioning the pentathlon and one of the parts of the pentathlon was nutrition. And we found that that is nutrition is intrinsically hard to get done it. It deals with physical stuff in the real world that needs to be prepared. And, you know, it takes a certain time. First off, like with nutrition in general, once again, it’s my my I always try to think about how to make it easier because in the end it’s it’s mostly not the the actual information that’s keeping

people from making a change. It’s the it’s that it’s hard to implement them. So it’s not necessary that people don’t know what they should be eating. It’s that they as you said default options because they don’t have the right systems in place. So, you know, general advice for someone who was thinking about how to get this in check is, you know, make one thing that I find extremely well is make a list of default options where we have there’s this this concept of paradigm of choice where if we have too many options presented to us, we cannot decide on any one of them. And then often we will default to making a decision without making a decision. And so coming up with like a short list maybe, you know, three to five meals that you enjoy that you can easily prepare and that you will always have the ingredients for in the house. And then whenever you feel hungry, you just like pick one of those three and do it. And that works surprisingly well.

We tried for we tried to come up with something that it makes it even easier. And, you know, we’re very data maybe six months ago launched a service called Clockwork Nutrition currently only in the US. This is how it works. We get your we get like some basic data like your age, your height, your gender, your weight, how much you’re moving. And you tell us a little bit about your goals, what you’re trying to accomplish some of the, you know, you might be wanting to lose some some fat or gain some weight. We we calculate roughly your total caloric needs. And then on Monday, we start sending you two meals per day that are pretty much perfectly tailored towards your macro nutrient and caloric needs. Every, you know, every evening or on a regular basis, you report back how you like those meals. You tell us how much you’re weighing so we can adjust and basically over time, based on your hunger levels, based on your subjective rating of your performance,

we will we will improve the meals that we’re sending you to get to close as possible to your ideal, you know, nutrition profile. It’s that’s good. I I like that idea of having you three go to meals and just make sure you got those ingredients in the house because that’s yeah, I look at our fridge now so it’s pretty empty at the moment. But yeah, if I just had those those three go to meals which could be which can be pretty easy to cook up. It’s like, wow, then that can I can spend five or 10 minutes getting that ready. And then I’m good to go and I’m not going to go down to the cafe and get something that’s maybe not the best, best option there. So it’s great. And I think some of the things we’ve covered here I know they’re not entirely related to swimming, but I know the people who listen to this podcast and the people that I work with daily it’s it’s all related, you know, you’re and you can apply a lot of this I guess productivity or habit

forming to swimming. So it’s been been a really interesting discussion so Chris appreciate you being on the podcast and for those listening, what’s the best way to find out more about you and what you do and ultra work and that’s what today’s house. Yeah, so you can go to ultra working calm and you can find out about everything we do and you can go to clockwork nutrition and you can find out about the nutrition part and you will also find me there and yeah, we’re have a lot of free tools. So the the work cycles we mentioned at the beginning, we have a free Google sheets that you can download and you can run for yourself. We have some other tools like like lights that are really popular to keep people consistent on their on their goals and yeah, we run the pentathlon multiple times a year and we’ll continue to come up with cool stuff that helps people in these fields and yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, I appreciate you because I

get people reaching out for you know to be on the podcast and then I saw you reach out. So I had to look at ultra working listen to the podcast and it’s like this stuff is really good and I’m glad you’re able to come on as a guest because yeah, I’ve really enjoyed today and this stuff is it’s so interesting but so much you can learn about it too and I think over the years it’s something I’ve become a lot more aware of working with swimmers that it doesn’t matter how how well someone can do something on on one day if they don’t have that consistency to be able to do it over a long time so it is just about forming forming habits and sometimes it comes down to removing barriers or distractions making sure you do it in a way where they don’t necessarily need to do something completely different. So what we recommend is doing like two or 400 meters of some drills in their warm-up whenever they’re training so they don’t need to

spend another hour at the pool every every week or anything so all these sorts of things I think is super important so I appreciate this Chris and thanks for being a guest. Thank you.

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