Effortless Swimming

My guest today is Aidan Booth who is over at New Zealand. Aidan mentioned in one of his emails that he hit a PB on his hundred freestyle after going through the 8-week Faster Freestyle Course. Listen as Aidan shares his experience and how he broke the 1:15 Barrier.

00:51 Goal
3:11 Power Diamond
4:33 Stroke Rate
6:38 Measuring Stroke Rate
8:04 Hold Of The Water
11:19 Technique Checklist
17:38 What Keeps You Coming Back?

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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 Aiden, who is over in New Zealand. So Aiden, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. We’ve been exchanging emails for a little while and you sent a recent one saying that you made a pretty good, you’d hit a PB for your 100 freestyle after going through the eight weeks of the eight week, faster freestyle course. And I think you’re probably, you know, in the upper end of, in terms of speed with compared to most of the people I tend to work with, which we’ll talk about in a second, but it was a really good PB that you hit. And I thought there’s probably a lot that people could take away from what you’ve done to make such a good improvement. So what’s, let’s just start off with what, what was the goal that you had in mind? And then what did you hit with Yeah, so I didn’t, I didn’t prior to doing the eight weeks, I done the five day catch challenge. I think it was that,

that you’ve got there and that was good. And you know, so I understood some of the basics of what you were doing there. I didn’t have a time in mind. I’m a recreational swimmer, for the most part. But so prior to coming into the eight week challenge I’d done, I think my best was one minute 18, 400 meters. And in one of the last sessions, I think it was session one week eight of the eight week challenge. I hit a 112. But that was after doing, you know, 30, 50 meter sprints. So I think if I’d done it before that, you know, I would have had a bit more, bit more stamina and been able to keep going. So I think in my own mind, I wanted to get under one minute 15. And now I’m sort of like, I know I could do under one minute 10. If I didn’t do it after a whole bunch of other tiring sets. So yeah, I was I was absolutely stoked. It was a quite big improvement, you know. And what was it over those eight? Was there anything over

those eight weeks that stood out to you that you maybe didn’t know before you introduced into your stroke?

It was really, you know, every sort of piece of the puzzle was sort of building on the last piece. So I can’t really pinpoint one thing. They were obvious parts where, you know, I thought the power diamond was was really good. And obviously, we spent a bit of time on that. I found, you know, stroke rate, really upping my stroke rate. And the final week there was big, they had a big impact as well. I think I think everything I just sort of built on one another. So starting with some of the basics and sort of building on that to gradually get faster. And it wasn’t like I was constantly sort of watching my speed each week. In fact, I really didn’t do that at all. I just noticed that gradually I was starting to get a better rhythm going. And then, you know, right at the end, sort of working on the rhythm of the kick. I mean, I think that was sort of the icing on the cake. And with the power diamond, was that before you just

hadn’t considered that part of the strike much? I was I was already trying to use my arm like a paddle. However, I don’t know if I was going sort of deep enough and no one had ever taught me sort of the right sort of shape there. So I may have been doing it a bit too far outside or something. So I didn’t I just didn’t have the technical knowledge prior, basically. And if you’re a new listener, if you want to be a podcast that the power diamond is it’s part of the freestyle stroke that when the hands passing underneath the shoulder, where we basically want the arm to create this half triangle, if you’re looking from from in front of someone. So the elbows pointing to the side of me down, it makes like a half triangle that’s on the side. And if you had both arms there, it would look like a diamond shape. That’s the power diamond refer to and most people to be too straight with their arm as they’re going through that circle, a lot of people their hand is out

really wide. And so get that diamond shape. It’s better in terms of you can shoulders better than the stronger muscles to the back and shoulders. And also that direction of force is more behind you, instead of sometimes off to the side or coming underneath the body. So that’s why we want to get that power diamond. And then the the stroke rate was that something you had thought about much as you’d swam or was it was a fairly new. It wasn’t something that I thought about obviously when I want to swim faster, I move my arms faster. But it wasn’t something that I even really paid that much attention to in terms of counting it and monitoring monitoring it. So that’s still something that I’m coming sort of coming to grips with and playing around with. I’m looking forward to doing you had a test there where you could find out your optimum stroke rate by doing different series of 100 meters at different stroke rates. So that’s actually what I’m

going to do next time I’m in the pool. But I have been watching that over the past week. And when I did, I think when I did my my last personal best, I was probably in the high 70s in terms of stroke rate. But when I’m cruising, I found that I’m probably sort of maybe like high 50s. Yeah, that’d be about right. Like it’s going to change with the different speed that you’re going. And it’s an important one to to consider. And I don’t talk a lot about it. Like most of the stuff I talk about is it’s it’s technical things. But then once we’ve got that technique in place, stroke rate is the other it’s the other half of the stroke. It’s it’s an important one to look at. And I had some me last week, I think it was and they said I’m around two minutes 45 or two minutes 50 per 100. And one of the things I mentioned to them without seeing their stroke is I want to just check what your stroke rate is because all the

time if someone’s around that speed, their stroke rate is probably in the mid to high 30s or really low 40s, which is which is super slow. And like it doesn’t matter how good it’s from you are going to be quite limited with the speed you can achieve. If you if it’s too low, obviously, we don’t want to start spinning the wheels and going too quickly either. But yeah, it’s fine that sweet spot between the between the two. And it’s good to like how do you measure your how do you measure your stroke rate? Have you got a Garmin? So I swear with a Garmin watch for quite a few years now. I treated myself to the form goggles recently. Yeah. So some of those now I can see it sort of in real time, but prior to that I’ve used the Garmin watch and that was always pretty good. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I think the form goggles I I don’t look at it. I’ve got I don’t often see it at the time but I do like to look back if I’ve done a set and it’s it’s

really interesting because before that, I must say what it was, I was never really aware of it at the time. But I look back at a set, it was like 2, 400s, one was at like 70%. One was it. No, one was at 80. One was at 90%. I look back at the stroke rate and it was originally 61 for the first one and then 60 stroke rate for the second one. And and you can see that the distance per stroke shortened. I can’t say it was like 1.7 to 1.58 or something. But the overall time for that 90% one was quicker because that stroke rate was a little bit quicker. And so it’s just interesting to see the combination of the two and how that translates to to speed. And it’s it’s really good just for building that awareness around what an impact the stroke rate can can have provided that you keep some sort of distance per stroke. How do you feel in that in that fast 100? Did you feel like you had a pretty good hold of the water still? I felt like I was really

moving. I mean, I was the fastest side sort of swam. So I felt like my arms were moving pretty fast. I was, you know, in the high 70s for my stroke rate, which is a lot higher than what I would normally do if I’m cruising. But yeah, I felt good. I felt good. I felt like I was catching the water really well. So that’s why I think it was a lot of these ingredients that you’d been talking about, sort of building and coming together to sort of work in a cohesive manner. Whereas in the past, maybe, you know, I wouldn’t have been able to tie things together together quite so cohesively. It hasn’t just been, you know, the one off speed though, because I feel like that’s almost doesn’t always also sort of paint the whole picture. It’s more about now, if I’m swimming and I’m just cruising, I’ll always be doing less than a minute 30. Right? You know, that would be like a one minute 30 per 100 would be like a warm up swim almost now. Whereas

in the past, it probably would have, you know, one minute 30 would have been a, you know, maybe decent swim. So I think, I think basically, there’s a lot of efficiencies that have come into my swimming now.

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 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 spars 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 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. Is there a bit of a checklist that you end up going through when you are swimming, a bit of a technique checklist that you go through in your mind? I don’t really go through it. I don’t think so. I think I’m always just consciously thinking about all of the lessons really. So I don’t, you know, that’s something I could add in and just work through it. You know, just thinking right back to the start as we’re talking here, one of the things that I used to do prior to

coming through the program was, I was used to breathe through my mouth and out through my mouth. So one of the first things I changed was breathing out through my nose. And I felt like that probably helped control my heart rate and keep it calmer in the water as well. So lots of little things. Yeah. And it’s funny, isn’t it? There’s just so much to think about. And stuff like that can be pretty quickly, I think. Like the, you know, the breathing, I’d say, like a week or two into it, most people can change that as a habit. So that’s become natural. And so then you can just keep adding one thing to the top of another. And over time you get, you get quicker. And I like your approach too. Like I said, you weren’t, you weren’t concerned about when the speed would come. You just follow the program. And then eventually this, this speed came and I think over the course of eight weeks. Like it’s a good timeframe to be able to make some things pretty

close to permanent. And it’s enough time to see a, see a difference. And with the five day catch challenge, we’ve had so many people make improvements in the five days. But to make it stick and to make it permanent, it’s going to take longer than those five days. So that’s why I think the eight week good timeframe there. I think it was actually quite good for me that I did the five days first. That was sort of how I found out about it all. So then when I came to do the eight days, it gave me like an in depth. So the five days was giving me like a 10,000 foot viewpoint of, you know, these are some of the key points of the stroke. But when I got into the week by week, eight week, I could really dive deeper. And I really enjoyed that. And I had time to practice them and sort of build, build those, those habits in. So I think that was quite good. And are you training with a squad or you, you go? No, I’ve just been training on my

own for the past year. Prior to that, when I lived in Argentina, I was training with, with a team, mainly triplets. But here, I’ve just been training twice a week on my own. And I think that’s been another reason why it’s been good just to have a plan served up to me. And I can just go and be a good student and follow the drills. Yeah, that’s great. I was chatting to someone on the phone this week and he was basically saying, look, I’ve got it’s I haven’t got any anything on for like another six months in terms of racing. And so like, I just want something to, I don’t want to have to think because I’ve got a lot of other stuff on, I just want to be able to go to the pool and follow like a warm up and work out. And then I, yeah, and then that’s it, you know, and that’s what I that’s why I put those main sets in there and the suggested warm up and stuff. So I can basically like watch the video and then to think too much about what you

going to do because it’s all there. And I mean, on the same, I like to be told what to do sometimes. It’s like just leave the the thought out of it. The only thing you need to think of is technical things. Yeah. And I was going through it at two sessions a week. So it actually took me longer than eight weeks. So, you know, I would just two sessions one week, two sessions the next. And, you know,

each week had three sessions. So it just maybe didn’t take me 11 or 12 weeks, but that was that was fine. Yeah, cool. That’s here. And so from here, you feel like tend is a is a possibility now. And where do you feel like you could find that? I know it’s a possibility because when I did my one 12, I just ran out of gas and using my goggles and my watch, it tells me the time on each length. So each progressive length length was literally one second slower. So my second length was one second slower. My third length was another second slower. My fourth length was, I think, another second slower. And it was just because I’ve done 30 sets of 50 right of that and tried to maintain a decent tempo for those. So it’s already at the end of a long workout. So I’m pretty confident that if I hadn’t done all of that prior, that I would be able to do one 10. And for me, I mean,

that’s just seemed sounds crazy. It still sounds crazy.

I think the crazy thing for me is it’s not that I’ve just started swimming. I have been swimming for, I don’t know, 10 or 12 years or something. But I’ve just been through your program and seen quite a dramatic gain. It’s like I had sort of plateaued prior to doing your training and then having gone through your training, I sort of blasted through it. Now, maybe I’m approaching a new plateau and just it’s just, you know, quite satisfying to hit some new numbers. Yeah, definitely. That’s why I think swimming is so good because you’ve got that. It’s not like maybe gymnastics or like surfing or something where it’s more

subjective. Swimming is like, this is the time you’re doing or these are the times that you’re holding and you know whether or not you’re getting, getting quicker. So that’s why I think it’s and it’s good to be able to see the the data to back up feeling better in the water, which is, which is really nice. Yeah, I also like that, you know, for me, it was about, you know, I’m not going to break your world record or anything, but I’m still being able to say, oh, well, you know, I’ve improved 10 percent. And I think that anyone swimming in the pool can say the same thing. It doesn’t matter what, you know, what speed you’re going, but you can say, well, you know, you I think that efficiencies were really amazing. Like you said, I think it was when we were talking about the Serrapi effect, you know, that’s something that might make you sort of one percent or two percent faster kind of a thing. And, you know, that that’s that’s great because

that’s a second for me, you know, over or a couple of, you know, it could be a couple of seconds even over 100 meters. So those little efficiencies building on one another and swimming faster with less energy being used. It feels good. And what do you what do you enjoy most about swimming? What do you really sort of get a kick out of? What what keeps you coming back? I think for me, it’s almost like a I get into a very sort of most of meditative state. It’s keeps me sane. It’s a good break from office work and family life and so forth. And I don’t get injured. I used to do quite a bit of running and started getting sore knees. And at the moment, I can’t actually run very much with my knees, but I can swim and I don’t get injured. Anytime I go on, you know, holiday or vacation, if I’m around water, I’ll be straight out into the water.

So I just think it’s really good. It’s just I think that I think I just like everything about it, to be honest. Yeah, I’m on the same page with you there. And if you if someone’s listening and they feel like they are injured because of swimming, it’s worthwhile

filming yourself because the amount of people who have under clinics and they’ve had a niggle in their shoulder, it’s so often it’s caused by technique. There certainly can be other things like for me personally, I once had a sore shoulder for a couple of weeks because of how I was sitting at my computer on my laptop like it was just the way my shoulder was I had. I think it was like my my lower trap or rhomboid, I think it was because of how I was at the computer. But there was a lot of times where it’s niggles. It’s worth getting that filmed and having someone just to look it out. But it’s so that’s the thing about swimming, isn’t it’s just so great to be able to to be able to just yeah, you can do it for forever. And I’ve had people contact me in their like 70s some in their I think 80s as well saying, look, I’m I’m going through the catch challenge or going through the eight week course and will this be relevant to me? And it’s like, how good

that? Like when you’re 70 and 80, you can still be swimming.

Yeah, no, it’s it’s it’s amazing. And I see, you know, older people in the pool all the time. Well, you know, I hope I’m I hope I’m still able to swim like like you and I’m that age and stuff. But

yeah, I’ve never been injured from swimming. I’ve been injured from lots of other things. But swimming seems to be the one thing that hasn’t injured me. So such would Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks so much for being on the on the podcast. How you made such a good improvement over the last couple of months. And yeah, wish you all the best. I can’t wait to hear once you get under that one 10. And yeah, I’ll let you know for sure. It’s been fantastic. And I love the love the program. And I’m looking forward to working through more of the programs in there and getting my stroke analyzed and stuff as well. I know you do that. So I think that would be hugely beneficial for me at the stage just to, you know, maybe improve a little bit more. So awesome. Yeah, all that improvement without having any video and done is is great. So there’s certainly some other things that will be there once we do some videos. So yeah, I’m looking forward

to it. Thanks, Abe. Thanks. 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: Breaking The 1:15 Barrier in A 100m Freestyle with Aidan Booth appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Michael Riber. I contacted him a couple of weeks ago because I would love to have him on the podcast to talk about his improvement after finishing the 5-Day Catch Challenge. Enjoy

00:54 Swimming Background
09:37 Swimming Injuries
10:56 Accept What You Are And Do Something About It
16:17 Sky Diving And Swimming
18:09 Improvement After The Course
27:38 Patience
35:21 Life Is Long

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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. The Effortless Swimming Podcast, my guest today is Michael Ryber. Michael, welcome to the podcast. Oh, thank you. So I got in contact with you a few weeks ago now and I said, look, I’d love to have you on the podcast because the improvement that you’d had after the five day catch change was pretty outstanding. And I thought it’d be great for you to share what has made such a difference for you in that time because I couldn’t quite believe it when I read your comments at the bottom of it. So for those listening, could you give people a bit of background on who you are, what you do and how long you’ve been swimming, that sort of thing? Yeah. So I started rather than late swimming like 30 years ago when I was 30 and I was in a swimming squad.

We met once a week. It was for grown-up, of course, and it focused on just getting the exercise and then improving a bit your technique. So at that point I wasn’t even able to crawl like 24 meters. I had to stop and breathe, but I got the breathing and stuff under control. Okay, but that was 30 years ago. It was a different swimming technique you used back then. The is stroke was the big thing of the time. And yeah, I became a father and I had to travel a lot with my work. So after a few years I stopped. And then I had my exercise from biking and from running and then I picked up again swimming only recently. I’m skydiving too. And then as I had an accident in 2017 where I broke my right ankle, then I had to go through a recovery with physiotherapist retraining. And part of that retraining was getting back in the pool because you’re not loading any of your joints when you are in a swimming pool. And so that was to regain some flexibility.

But yeah, I could still swim the call and that’s fine. But yeah, got the exercise. Then number of other health issues. So it turned out I could no longer bike. I could no longer run. And I gained a lot of weight as a result of that. So I, on doctor’s advice, got back into the pool. But living in Denmark, even the pools can be quite cold. So it’s not like such a pleasure going in the pool. But I started up, had a few runs and then COVID came and closed all the pools. And there I was back at square one. And then May this year, the pools opened up again and I could start swimming and I found out that if I came in the day, not in a swimming squad, then I had access to more heat and being able to do this on my own time as I was working from home. Then I could arrange the time as I wanted it. I could go in the middle of the day to those sessions. So there was not a lot of people and meaning more space in the lanes.

And that was just comfortable starting out about 450 meters and then gradually growing it to 800. And but still, when I look around, I see, man, you are slow. You might get some good exercise, you might get your heartbeat up. But everybody else is almost faster, even those doing breaststrokes. So I said, OK, this is great. It’s a life change for me. I was biking four to five hours a week and I had to do something else. So yes, I really enjoyed swimming now that I could come at my own time. So I really wanted to do that. And since I know I’m going to be doing that a lot and yeah, things happen in 30 years, I better revisit my swimming style. And so that was where you first started maybe looking for a way to get faster, was it? Is that when you sort of came across the catch? Yeah, so now we are in August, where I had my 61 year birthday and I got a present from my daughter, which was swim smooth, which I’m sure you know.

It must have been something of a vital at that time in Australia. But my experience from skydiving is that using video, you can really learn a lot faster than just reading a book and then trying to do what that book describes. And then when I looked around in YouTube, I saw different videos and different people trying to teach you the style. I started in a swimming squad in September and then I came across effortless swimming. And I mean, I like the Australian way. I like the laid back, relaxed approach. No big promises, just nice, sympathetic people. And then I joined the catch challenge. And I had already at that point trying to work in some of the changes that I had read. But following it, getting it step by step really made a huge difference for me. So I was able to take it slow and focus on the technique. I know that I shouldn’t do just laps and laps for endurance or whatever because as long as this technique is not the right technique,

I will just be practicing some wrong strokes and get some bad habits. I ran into a shoulder injury because that catch is really so different from what I tried before. I had some inherent failures like crossovers that exaggerated the shoulder injury. So I had to stop for three weeks. It turned out try and find out some guidance. What do you do when you have an injury? And I mean, if you ask physiotherapists, they say, don’t swim at all if you have an injury. If you ask hardcore trainers, they said, get on with the job, get in the water. You lose your feel for the water being out of it. And then you can start all over again. So I found a middle ground. I was a physiotherapist in swimming in the US who recommended that you can continue as long as the pain is mild. But as soon as it gets like an oing and never train if it’s hard pain, it will keep you in the water. It will keep your feel for the water. Do more kicking if it’s a shoulder injury.

Do other exercises and then go slow on don’t do max and any of that. And that’s what I did. And over the course of four weeks, thanks to the course, I got some corrections in the stroke. And now I have no pain from injury or exertion or anything. I’m off to swimming for hours a week. So it’s great. That’s a great result. And I get it quite more often than I would have expected a couple of years ago. There’s a lot of people who do have some injuries caused by their swimming or they get it when they swim. And I’m quite amazed at how often it just comes down to their technique. So that’s a really good thing to hear. Do you know what had caused it? Were you trying to get a really exaggerated catch or was there something there that stood out to you that you changed? I mean the first real eye opener was when I took your advice and shot a video even though it was a bad video. Then it struck me what I actually did compared to what I thought I did.

And that was the first feedback you then gave me on the members call. I mean it’s like pulling all the curtains that you’re swimming right there. There’s no middle layers of interpretation. It’s just hard facts. That’s what you do. Like it or not. But if you accept that and that’s the first step in learning is accepting where you are then you can do something about it. And there I could see I still had the crossover in the first video that I shouldn’t have. And I thought maybe that it was over exaggerating the catch that had caused that pain. But why only in one side and not in the other? You would think you were symmetrically the video proved otherwise. It’s really an eye opener. So that’s like one thing. The other thing was that I was ramping up my swimming. I was like three times a week and one was with the squad and then I had like two sessions where I could do the five day catch challenge. But then with the three weeks pause then it took quite a while to complete those five days.

And then again you advised three to four times in the water and then it comes back to me from my skydiving learning experience that when you do skydiving typically you would go every other weekend do a few jumps. So over a couple of months you would progress. But you would expect to progress and then stagnate and then progress maybe fall a little back. So you have your progression is not linear. It’s up and little down and then up and small jumps. But what I did back then was that I got a new experience. I took a one week vacation at a training camp just focused on this where we got in five jumps every day. We do feedbacks from every single jump. And the instructor he is excellent and he could identify himself with each individual jumper go into what does that particular jumper need right now to adjust. And I have never experienced anything. I was just growing and growing and growing and growing continuously for five days.

No, it was a week to five jumps a day but a full week. And what it taught me is that it’s better to do a lot of training and get feedback and improve it like identify that experience. Because then you don’t get those fallbacks and jumps that you otherwise do if you only every week and maybe skip the training and so forth. 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 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 at 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 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 spars 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 used 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. And there’s many similarities in skydiving and swimming. Because in skydiving you use your arms to adjust and feel the wind as you travel 200 kilometers through the air. And then by maneuvering you can move around in the air.

So there’s a lot of core muscles you use and getting up on the air, getting that feel and having the feel for the air. So there’s a lot of really using your entire body and to feel the air. And that’s that feel you lose if you don’t jump regularly. And it’s the same in the water. I mean you get that feel when you extend your arm to see if it’s in the right position before the catch. And when you feel the catch where you actually get a hold on the water, it’s feeling. And a few days out of the water and I feel am I not doing it right? But then I do the free recommended drills there. First the 616, then the doggy scoop and then the YMCA. And then I know, okay, I got it. I got it. I know what to do now. Let’s focus on the next thing I need to train. But just like in every training to kickstart that feeling, okay, I’m there. Yeah. There’s a couple things there. The first one is when you first started, I haven’t sort of mentioned this yet.

So what was the improvement that you had from when you first started to when you finished the course of that couple week period? Yeah. I mean, if my 100m times, they were when I really went forward like 230, 230 seconds. And then after the catch challenge, I mean, I got a time of 135. And last week in my swim squad, we don’t do timing regularly, but every now and then we do. And there I had a time of 131. So it’s absolutely unbelievable how you can knock off one full minute. To me, it’s like, uncomfortable that it’s even possible. But I’m just getting hungry here. I’m really how I enjoy. But I mean, I have no hurry. I mean, I have the rest of my life. This is part of my life now. So I do it to lose weight. As I gained so much weight, I was and I’m still overweight. But I lost 14 kilos since August. And I only have 10 more to lose before I can say that I’m back to my weight before all those health issues kept me away from my biking.

So yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah, it’s just one of those changes in life that you have to face when you get older and get adversity in your life. And you just have to find out, accept that you are not what you were before, face it or suffer. And it’s tough, but you just need to find other ways to do what you want. And if you don’t, then you are heading for a car skip. Yeah, it’s tough. So you got it. So the swimming is really great. And I just joined now an open water team. And it’s mostly mature swimmers. Many are parents or grandparents already. So I feel that I fit in in that group. And this is really one of my goals. I always enjoyed swimming in the ocean. As my job took me around, I have been swimming in Rio de Janeiro at Cocacabana Beach. I’ve been swimming in the Philippines, in Thailand and always the ocean has been a big draw. It’s wild. It’s like wow. And combined that with my previous experience as a recreational diver.

Something I picked up in the Philippines. A lot of joy there as well. So I love learning. I can only recommend it. That’s really great. And one of the things that we were talking about before we jumped on the call was, you’ve said you were, you film yourself every two weeks. And look at the footage and review how you’re going and the things that you’re working on. And obviously that’s a big help to be able to bridge the gap from what you think you’re doing to what you’re actually doing. It’s amazing what you can learn from the video. I mean, even after the last feedback you gave me and I thought I corrected those issues. And then when I filled me just this Monday, I could see I’m not there yet. So I was a bit disappointed. But still then when I compared like what had happened over the past two weeks, I could see some improvements. Just not what I had in my head, imagine. So that continuous feedback is part of the learning process, really.

And it gives you something to strive for to make that perfect. But filming a video in Denmark in a public swimming pool. No, it’s so hard to get a permission because the people responsible for the swimming pool cannot allow other people to be in the frame. So I was able to make an arrangement with the manager that if I come early in the morning, use the dive pool that is not otherwise used. Then I would be able to record my swimming. And the way I do this then is by using a GoPro that I have a suction cup on so that it can be mounted under the water. And it’s only 12 and a half meter across in the dive pool. But placing the GoPro like in one end and then I swim in the middle of the pool back and forth across from the camera. Then I get footage that is sufficiently good that I can see what I’m actually doing and that I also provided for those reviews. And it doesn’t need to be amazing quality, does it?

Even there’s some cheaper cameras than a GoPro like Kaiser Bass is one. And they’re like $100, $150. And it’s not as good as a GoPro, but it’ll do. And for the amount of time that people are typically swimming, it’s so worth the investment just to get an underwater camera or get someone to film them. And find a way to get it done. Because as you were saying, you thought you’d corrected some things, hadn’t changed it quite yet. But with that feedback, it is just so valuable. Yeah, and that’s really the thing I like about the video that it allows you to identify those one-two key areas you should work on now. Because swimming is so complex that if you think about all the things you have to do, then you can focus maybe on the entry of the arm and the catch. But then you cannot at the same time focus on your hips, your head position, your breathing and your kick. So it’s like one thing at a time. And yeah, so it’s good to be able to say, okay, now this is what you should be focusing on.

And you sent your video in. So you’re one of our video members. And so just in our memberships where you have access to all of our courses and workouts and stuff. And every month I do a live Q&A where people will send their videos and I’ll analyze them on the call and give you one or two things to focus on. And that’s where you got that first analysis. Yeah, that’s great. I mean, it’s a great system. After the five day catch challenge, I joined the membership. I mean, it’s great. It’s really, I mean, Brent, the advice you give, it’s top class. Absolutely. I think it’s a great ability to give a swimmer what he needs to focus on instead of just telling him all the things that are wrong. Yeah, I appreciate that. I see like, yeah, I see the amount of feedback that some people are given. And it’s like, it’s too much. And I know from personal experience, if I’m trying to do, I can’t do three things. Two, sometimes I can do if they’re, if it might be like head position and like entry or something.

But it’s very hard to do more than two. So yeah, I think it’s the only way you can really get better is to have ideally one thing to work on at a time. Maybe two and just have that patience like you mentioned earlier. Because with that patience, you’re not trying to force your swimming. You’re just allowing yourself to relax, work on these changes and know that they’ll come. And that’s, that’s typically when I see people make the biggest improvements is when they’re not looking to rush it. They’re happy to go through the process it needs to be gone through in order to get those changes to become permanent. So I think that sort of attitude or approach is one big reason why you had the success that you’ve had so far. Yeah, also one of the things I noticed that at the end of a workout where I’m exhausted is actually where I had had the best feel for the water. And when I do my swim down, I often have that great experience of things coming to me in a way that I wouldn’t have expected.

So, yeah, and then another thing with those workouts, there’s never a swimming session that is boring. It’s just enjoyable always. So, I mean, compared just to doing laps and laps, I love working on the technique and getting this kind of feedback. It’s really great. I even consider joining so you could do more video analysis, but it’s not for my wallet. And you need to be a pro to put that kind of money down to sort of get you any time you want to have an analysis. But I’ll say the membership is great. It gives you some of that experience and the video feedback is the same. It’s just you have to wait for your turn once a month. Yeah, so you’re talking about the stroke analysis membership there. So that’s where people can send videos whenever they like and coach them on their stroke. And I had a guest on recently, so Guy Quest, who he sent his video through for analysis on the members call. And because he was struggling to make more than 50 meters without stopping.

And I gave him one or two tips and it made a difference to him going. Maybe like a hundred or 150 meters like he was. It took his heart rate down a lot. And then I’ve coached him for the last couple of months through the stroke analysis coaching. And now he’s taking a bit of a break because he’s going to be doing a little bit more running for the next three months and lead up to a marathon. But yeah, but so we work closely for that that time period. And so for people who are like really wanting to send a video each week or so on, that’s that’s who we usually get in. And but because you’re filming regularly and you know what you’re looking for at the moment. I think what you’re doing is, you know, is exactly sort of where you should be should be out at the moment. And the do you feel like you’ve got the same sort of feeling that you get from riding or biking that you now have in swimming? Or is that are you getting that sort of sensation of you getting as good a workout as you used to from riding?

Yeah, I would say even better. It’s done wonders to my feet and ankles. And my average pulse is about 120. Okay, it says nothing to other people, but it’s in the high intensity range of my. Yeah. So I even get close to my max pulse when I want to max out. So as an exercise, nothing beats swimming. That’s for sure. And at the same time, if I want to go aerobic, I can easily do that. I discovered that I have a speed currently around two minutes 17 seconds. If I go at that effort level, like 60% of full effort, then I can just keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going. And it doesn’t matter what it is. If it’s a 50 meter arm aiming for if it’s 150, it’s those two minutes and 17 seconds. So that’s a fully aerobic exercise. I can just continue with that. So if I wanted to go longer, which I sometimes do like 75 minutes on a workout, I could easily do that. And I hope really to bring that into the open water because yeah, that is really just swimming long distance.

And it should be enjoyable, but the water is five degrees here in Denmark at the moment. Yeah, a little bit colder. And coming from you on the cold side, coming from your skydiving background, I feel like the open water would be a good fit for you. Still a bit of excitement and maybe not as much of an adrenaline rush, but still a bit more excitement than swimming in the pool for you. So that would be a good combination. Yeah, yeah, I’ve joined an open water squad now and plan on swimming once a week and they have wetsuits that I can borrow. So I don’t have to like make an investment in a really thermal wetsuit when I’m not the size that I plan to be. So in the interim that is there. And I plan to take the good experience with the video with me into the open water by making some stuff folding underwater again with a GoPro camera. So that those in the squad who are interested in getting video, they can use that opportunity to learn how is their stroke when they are wearing a wetsuit.

How are they balanced in the water? How do they swim? Yeah, so… I think you become one of the favourites in the squad if you’re doing filming for people. They’ll be pretty happy about that, I reckon. So Michael, thanks for being on the podcast. Any final words of wisdom or what are your most looking forwards to in the next couple of months that’s got you excited about your swimming? Yeah, a bit of wisdom is that life is long. So just take your time and enjoy and then do the things that make you happy. And I always appreciated education and support others who want to educate themselves, sponsor some people in the Philippines where I live for five years through an education. And this is my education. So yes, I also like to educate myself. I think we can learn all life and life is long. So enjoy it. That’s a great way to finish up. When you feel like you’ve stopped learning, that’s when I think life would get pretty miserable from then onwards.

Because there’s nothing for me as a coach to come across someone, and it doesn’t really happen, but to come across someone who thinks they know it all and is not willing to learn anymore. And I think, and look for me, I reckon I felt like I knew the most when I was about 19 and I started coaching. I thought, I know how to do this, but that’s when I knew the least. So yeah, I think that’s a great one to finish up on. Michael, thanks for being on the podcast. I’m looking forward to working with you over the next few months and just continue to see your development and growth as a swimmer. Okay. Thank you, Brent. Take care. 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: Wiping 1-min Off A 100m Time Trial with Michael Riber appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My Guest today is Zac Turner, he is a physio at Kieser Australia. I have met Zac through a clinic that I was running in Melbourne, he invited me to try Kieser Gym that he worked at. I have been going there for a couple of months now, I have really enjoyed it, got a lot out of it, and now that I have come back to swimming, I’ve found that my shoulders have been really good as a result of strength training there. So I thought it would be good to get him into the podcast to talk about Strength Training.

01:34 Physio Background
03:16 Training Approach
06:55 Internal And External Rotation Strength Link To Swimming
10:26 Injury Prevention
14:51 Combined Elevation Test
17:11 How Can People Improve Their Overhead Range
20:36 How Often You Do Strength Training
23:57 Tapering Up

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●6x supervised strength training sessions
●6 week Kieser membership
●All for $180
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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 Zach Turner. He’s a physio from Keys at Australia, so Zach, welcome to the podcast. Thanks Brenton, thanks for having me. It’s great to get on here. I’m a long-time listener and follower of your Effortless Swimming platform, so glad to take part. Yeah, I think it’d be good for the people listening to know sort of how this came about. So we met through a clinic that I was running in Melbourne, and then, I mean, we were out at the pool for a while with lockdowns and stuff, but then we caught up a few months later and you said, I want you to come and try out this Keyser gym that you work at. And I’ve been going for the last, I don’t know, maybe two months now, I think it’s

been. Yeah. And I’ve really enjoyed it, got a lot out of it. And now that I’ve come back to swimming, I’ve found that my shoulders have been really good as a result of some of the strength training there. And so I thought it’d be good to get you on the podcast to talk about strength training, talk a bit about what Keyser’s doing. And I don’t want this to sound like an advert for Keyser, but we will sort of, you know, obviously refer to that because that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months. But yeah, full disclosure, I go to Keyser and I use the gym. This isn’t a paid advert by Keyser or anything like that. So I just wanted to put that out there before we start. So just for the listeners, what’s your sort of background as a physio and as an athlete as well? Yeah. So I’ve recently gotten into long distance triathlon over the last four or five years now. Been on hold the last two years for obvious reasons.

But I guess the biggest downfall in my triathlons were always my swim. I’m not a natural swimmer. I’m definitely more of a natural runner. And it’s always been that one leg that’s really been holding me back. So I got on to one of your clinics and really found that I got some great results in my swimming following that. And prior to Can’s Ironman this year was swimming really, really well. We started really excited about what I could put out on the day. And unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get there. So over the last little while, everyone talks about Ironman being pretty hard to finish their up. They’re pretty hard to start at the moment. So, but yeah, and then I work as a physio. Like you mentioned, Brenton, currently I work with Kaiser, standing in the team in Torquay here. And similar to yourself, I utilize the strength equipment that we have here at Kaiser and it just gives me great ability to back up in my sessions

both not only swimming, but running and cycling as well. And I really try and target my strength to work on whatever elements of my stroke, talking about swimming now that I need to focus on. And hoping that I can, yeah, help other people get great results as well. And glad to hear that you’re one that’s starting to notice some benefits, Brenton. Yeah, the thing that stood out to me is it’s quite a different approach to any sort of gym session that I’d done before. So I think it’d be good to maybe talk about what’s the approach and how is that different to your typical sort of strength training or gym program?

Yeah, so like you mentioned, you walk into a Kaiser Centre or a Kaiser gym and it does have a bit of a different look and a different feel to what you may see in some of the gyms. The first thing that strikes is that the equipment’s a little bit different and they were just to really isolate the areas that we want to isolate. And then beyond that, there’s some machines that we can use for some more compound movements as well. Where I really like to start off and where you and I started off was getting as much data and as much information as we can. And we have the ability to do some strength testing. And from those strength testing results, we can really start to map out where any of those strength deficiencies might be and then really correlate that with whatever that person or athlete may be then working on outside or in their chosen sport. And we used an example with yourself, for instance, someone who might

be finding it difficult to really get into a nice high elbow catch position. And if there’s a lot of queuing, they’re still not really getting there. We can really start to then strength test around the rotator cuff and see if there’s any strength that may be limiting them as well. And that’s the starting point so that we can make fully individualised strength program for them. And then the other most noticeable difference would be the time under load principle that we use. So we had to listen, must fatigue within a two minute time frame. And again, that’s different to what we use for reps and sets. For me personally, in endurance sport, I think it makes a lot of sense when you think about the strength endurance principles and then using time under load for a principle of that, I’ve found a great correlation between my strength training and endurance sport as well. Yes, it’s very different to what I’ve done before.

So essentially, for me, at least the program, it’s about 10 exercises, roughly nine or 10, and it’s then just one round of it. And you do sort of your reps and it’s like four seconds, one direction, hold for two, four seconds, the other direction, hold for two. And the aim is to kind of get to fatigue within this 90 to 120 second time frame. And then that’s it for the exercise. So we’re not doing several rounds of it. And for me, I like it for a few reasons. One is I’m sort of out of there within about 40 minutes, roughly. So I know exactly what I’m meant to be doing. I can see that progress over time. And since I started, the weights that I’m moving, it’s improved dramatically. And I think when you go from doing next to no strength training or no structured strength training to actually doing it, obviously that makes a big difference. But it’s yeah, it’s really I’ve noticed a lot in my swim, particularly through the shoulders.

So when I first got back in the pool two months ago now, I think it might have been, I was having some pain through the front of my right shoulder because that’s where I had a mountain bike accident a couple of years ago. And it would sort of flare up every now and then. And I’d say after four or five weeks, about four or five weeks, it started to disappear. And so my shoulders have been feeling really good ever since. And I think that’s a big, a big factor to a couple of the machines that they’ve got there, particularly the internal external rotation machine, which is obviously a really important part for the thing for swimmers. And I think it’d be good to touch on like initially when we were chatting, you had an idea that is is internal external rotation strength linked to your ability to kind of to be a good swimmer or to get a good catch. And when we did my testing, we looked at the numbers and I saw it and went, all right, I’m pretty weak in my internal external rotation.

I haven’t done the retesting yet, but I’ve got no doubt that my numbers would be a lot better than what they were when I first first started. But with that hypothesis, it then just showed that, OK, for me, I’m not really strong there, but I can still get a good catch. But it wasn’t it wasn’t wasn’t painless all the time. And and I probably couldn’t sustain it as long as I can now. So I was probably breaking down a bit quicker. So I want to talk a little bit about maybe that hypothesis that you had when we first started chatting and then maybe talk about even just that that machine and what it strengthens and so on, because I found that to be a really good one for swimmers. Yeah, look, the important thing to note with with strengthening is it does need to be individual and the same program or or each athlete their program is going to look completely different. And what’s important to to remember when we’re designing a program

for someone is that really needs to complement what we’re trying to get them to do in that given sport. And if we’re talking about swimming with yourself, Brenton, that’s we’re having a really, really good relationship between a physio and the coach is so important that you can come to whoever it is that you’re working with and say, well, this is what we’re having trouble working on. And then we can make sure that from a strength standpoint that that might be an element that that we need to focus on. So we, like you said, we had the discussion around if you’re finding it hard with any athletes to either get in or maintain that higher higher work position, would that then correlate potentially with some weakness through the rotator cuff and more specifically through those shoulder internal rotators? And we found that, yeah, that probably wasn’t as well supported in your case in terms of you can you can get into good positions

and and obviously have a really good high elbow catch. But the strength through that area of the rotator cuff probably didn’t quite correlate the same way. But we also then need to keep in mind that there’s other elements throughout swimming where where strength can impact as well. Essentially, when we’re swimming, the main aim of swimming is to increase our horizontal displacement in the water as much as we can with a stroke. So essentially what we mean by that is moving from point A to point B in any given stroke and the further we can move between those two points in each stroke.

Ultimately, the further we go, the faster we can swim, the more effectively we can swim. So what that means as well is if you can get into good position through a high elbow catch and hold a lot of water there, you also need to have a really good level of strength to be able to apply force back against the resistance that the water is going to give off to propel yourself forward. So getting in positions, one thing, but also being able to then push back against that water to drag yourself forward and create that horizontal displacement is another big consideration that we need to remember when we’re strengthening as well. Yeah, that’s that’s exactly right. And it’s I think you can get some sort of obviously you get some sort of strength benefit from from swimming, but it does certainly make a difference. And I’ve for me where I’m at with with my swimming, it might compete twice a year or so, so I’m not competing a lot.

But really, I want to make sure that I’m able to swim for the next 10, 20, 30 years and and do it pain free and not get injured, where I have to sit out of the water for for a while. And so for me, it’s I’d say it’s primarily injury prevention and just making sure that that I feel good and can do it for a long time. But obviously it has those benefits of helping your swimming as well. And with the athletes that you work with, do you see a mix of those two goals? Or is it primarily rehab or prevention? What’s the balance there with the athletes that you see? Yeah, absolutely. Like the injury side of things is hugely important or massive consideration that we need to take with swimmers and a big part of the clientele that we see here. And it’s worth touching on that prevention is always better than the queue up. And we’d rather see our patients before they get injured so that we can put in a step to keep them in the pool.

Because the longer we can keep someone in the pool and the more consistent they can back up their sessions, the more likely they are to get the outcomes that they that they want to get. And yeah, so strengthening, obviously the stronger we are, the more capacity is in those muscles, tissues, bones and the more forces that they can withstand, which means you’re going to have a greater capacity to be able to back up your session and less likely to develop injuries. There’s also other elements that we need to consider and injury prevention tools that we can measure to make sure that we are having that philosophy of prevention first. So I actually worked on a study a few years back now that that we got published about a test for swimmers. And it’s called the Combined Elevation Test, which is a test that looks at the extension range combined through the shoulder, combined with extension through the thoracic spine.

And what we’re able to find from that study was that based on someone’s height and wingspan, we can get an approximate value of where they may or a normative value of where they should reach on this combined elevation test. Now, that’s a pretty simple test to do poolside before a swim where you might go in and do a quick screening test. And if you’re outside of 10 percent variable of your baseline, and that might be an indicator that you’re creeping up to the threshold of maybe getting injured and maybe you need to adapt to something. So some trackable tools like that are fantastic. We’ve got to remember that swimming, there’s high revolutions of the shoulder within every swim. Your each stroke is against resistance. So unlike sports like running, where we tend to say that you’re more likely to get injured because of loading, well, there’s some pretty high loads in swimming as well. Yeah, I see that with video analysis where

if you pause the video in a certain position, you look at the position someone’s in and you go, how are you not injured yet? Or normally they say, yeah, like my neck’s been really sore or my shoulder’s been really sore because particularly some of the overhead stuff where that might be from the like the entry to the reach or the catch, people get to some pretty uncomfortable positions when you actually look at it in slow motion. So that that mobility or range of motion is really important. And we used to do the combined elevation test at clinics. And we don’t anymore because we just don’t quite have the time to fit that in along with all of the other stuff that we we do. But I remember I posted a video about that maybe five, six years ago. And it got really good traction because I think it showed a lot of people what’s an easy test to do, first of all. And if you’re not sure what we’re talking about, you can look up,

just look it up online, combined elevation test. But the way I’d probably explain it would be like lying the ground. The way we were doing it was you’ve got your chin on the ground, hands out in front of you. And you can either do it like thumbs crossed or hand on top of the other. Just depends how how would you test it? I’ll let you explain it before I butcher it too badly. So you did you did a pretty good explanation there. So in the in the study that we did, it was really important that we standardised it as much as we possibly could. So essentially, you’ve got a block platform with a vertical pole that’s got a measuring tape on it. We get the athlete to lay. We got forehead in contact with the ground, arms above head, one hand on top of the other and in a streamline position like you would when you were diving for entry into the water. From there, the aim is to extend or elevate the arms or hands as high up that pole as you can.

And we’re looking at the movement that we get is glenocumeral extension, which is the shoulder joint itself, combined with the extension through the thoracic spine to achieve that that range. And then for the use of what we mentioned a little bit earlier as an injury preventative tool, getting those baselines based on those normative values that we gather from that from that study. We can then use that as a tool to go. If you’re outside of that 10 percent ratio, well, there may need to be some modifications to some training sessions to make sure that we do stand on that side of prevention rather than cure. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we was working with one of the the physios who was doing some work with the Australian swim team a couple of years ago, and she that’s why I first came across this test. And they were sort of looking at the way that they were. She was referring to it as is pretty much all the Australian swimmers.

They can get their arms above a 20 degree angle. So straight out is if you call that zero degrees, you know, 20 degrees would be above that. She said all the elite swimmers in that range. Now, for most people come to our clinics when we were testing it, I’d say we’d probably get like 20 percent would be above like 5 percent or perhaps 10 percent. And then the rest would either be zero or couldn’t get above zero. And it’s it’s it’s relative because well, it’s important because that sort of overhead range is quite it’s got quite a direct correlation to your ability to get a high elbow position in the catch. So if you can improve that over time, then it’s going to help you something. No doubt. And I think we see a lot of people who do have pretty tight shoulders just from years of sitting down or driving, you know, just all of the life stuff. What are some ways that that you think people can improve for just based on your study?

How can people improve their range overhead? Yeah, so in terms of in the study itself, we didn’t look too much in terms of, I guess, the methodology about getting improvements in it. There was more about finding that normal data that things that people can be doing at home to make sure that they can keep keep good good range through shoulders and even that thoracic spine is just making sure that their recovery routines are great. So you may utilize a phone roller through thoracic spine to make sure that you’re staying nice and mobile through their spiky balls, even through the rotator carp and chest after twin sessions are great as well. And and then like I’ve touched on the importance of being able to make sure that you’re recovering from each and every session that you’re doing by making sure that your physical capacity is above the demand of it by making sure that you’re strong goes a long way as well.

So, yeah, so there’s generally the three things that I would highly encourage, probably in no particular order, but making sure that you’re maintaining and upholding enough strength to be able to perform and back up at the level that you want to back up at and then keeping on top of those recovery recovery tools, phone, roller, spiky ball, et cetera. 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 at 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.

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I was really impressed when I used 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 fifteen dollars off your order back to the podcast. And what about how often should you be doing strength training? Is it like swimming where I’d suggest three a week minimum really what you want to do to to improve or is it is it two a week? Where do you often see works works best for your clients?

We we often encourage anywhere between two to three times a week. It’s generally pretty sufficient. More of the our clients that maybe a little bit more more keen on it might split their program into two and do a few few more days. But we’ve got to also remember that it’s it’s through the process of recovery that we’re actually making strength gain. So if we compromise that recovery, then yeah, we’re actually going to be compromising how much of a strength improvement we can get. It’s also key to keep in mind, like you mentioned earlier before, Brenton, that their elements of swimming or and a lot of elements of swimming that are going to work on strength as well. So we want to also ensure that what we’re doing in the gym isn’t then going to mean that we can’t then go and swim to the extent that we want. So you may need to work around if you’ve got a strength set, which, for example, might be hand paddles, poor boy, even band around

your feet to really work on some of that upper body strength. So yeah, you want to make sure that you’re appropriately then structuring your strength sessions on times where they’re not going to interfere with how you actually they’re going to perform in that session as well. Yeah, I think that’s that’s a really important one. And I’ve not battled with that, but I’ve found when I’ve been able to fit in my strength sessions, sometimes it’s coincided. Like I’ll train Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings, and often it’s been like a Tuesday afternoon and a Thursday afternoon that I’ve trained. So kind of going into the Wednesday, Thursday sessions a little bit soren, fatigued, and I certainly feel it. And it’s a bit of a battle to get through those sessions and swim them as well as I would if I was fresh. But for me anyway, I’d rather do the strength sessions and maybe suffer a little bit in the swims. But so it is certainly something that you’ve got to take into account

because I some of these swims I’ve felt a little bit heavy, a little bit sore. But I know in the in the long run, look, it’s going to be better. But you certainly do feel, especially when you go from maybe not doing any sort of strength training, don’t be surprised if you might feel a little bit heavy in the water through the arms, maybe through the legs and so on. And yeah, your times might be a little bit slower initially as a result of that. So it’s important to, I think, to be able to understand that that’s that’s probably going to happen at least for the first couple of weeks. Absolutely. And that’s where we really need to fill into how we’re feeling. I’m making sure that we’re adapting our strength sessions and like we’ve touched on our other sessions as we need to. So if you are coming into the gym sore after a big strength session in the pool and another gym session, the day prior to that, well, you may not then decide that you’re going to do that.

That program in its entirety in terms of weight, but dropping those weights back 10 or 20 per cent to make sure that you’re still getting some input in there without compromising that recovery is important and most sensible, sensible steps. And in terms of resting up, so for me, I’ve got an event coming up early Jan, which would be my first race for probably about over a year. And I’m thinking for like leading to that event, I want to I might do an easier session at the start of the week and then the race is going to be on the weekend and just make sure I taper up because as a teenager when we’re racing, I found that typically the guys would need a little bit of a longer taper to rest up, often sometimes between seven to 14 days if we’re under heavy training. Sometimes for the girls, it was like five to 10 days. It obviously depends on the individual. But making sure that you do taper or you ease off your training

and your strength training leading into into an event. So what is there anything there that you would often suggest to people if they are going into a race that they’re targeting? Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I probably can’t share too much of my own experience lately. It’s been over two years since my last race as well. So I unfortunately haven’t got myself to a taper yet. But yeah, definitely we want to make sure that we’re fresh enough before the before the start of that race. But we want to also make sure that we’re keeping those important muscle groups active and still working those areas as much as we can. So in the in the week or even two weeks leading up to a race, it’s still really important that you get into the gym and completing those sessions. But you may even then drop those weights down more than what you what we previously mentioned, you may even drop them back 50 percent in those in those seven or 14 days prior to heading into a race or an event.

Yeah, yeah, gotcha. That’s that sounds good. And it’s, you know, you just that I remember mistiming a taper. And I did it on a few occasions because it’s hard to hit your taper if you are training with an eight or nine sessions a week and maybe three gym sessions back in the day. You know, this is like half a lifetime ago, it feels like now. But it’s it was it was quite hard to get your taper right. But I found quite often I wouldn’t back off early enough. So what I’ve tried to do over the last few years is just make sure that I give myself enough time to rest up, especially when you’re not doing as that much training like compared to what we were doing. I might be doing three to five swims a week that. Yeah, that’s I just gave myself those those two weeks of just starting to dial it down so you’re going feeling feeling fresh. And again, it comes down to the individual and the experience that they’ve had before.

I know I don’t take it very well. I know that when I do go into a taper for the most part, I can bank on pretty much getting sick. So I’ve faced my tapers now around on trying to keep some intensity in there, but dropping that overall volume instead. So that I’m yeah, I found that when I do that, I’m I’m getting to the start line healthy.

But yeah, we’ll see how we go with the next one. What do you what do you think that is? Because I say it happens a lot with the with the elites. Some is when they lead into national trials or or the Olympics. Like it’s just do you think it’s because they go from such a heavy load and the body is just working, working, working and it’s got this built up fatigue. And then when they rest, their body just goes, OK, now I can work and relax. And they get sick like what do you reckon it comes from? Yeah, it probably needs to be a few, few more studies into the area. I don’t think there’s quite enough sort of research going into that.

I guess topic is topic at the moment. But yeah, when we’re when we’re working hard in our training and depleting our energy stores and really working at high heart rate going for a long period of time. Yeah, we’re we’re compromising our body’s immune system. And and then when it leads us more vulnerable, I guess when we when we do start to back off to to get viruses or or illnesses as well. So that’s that’s where I’ve found that keeping some intensity in there, keeping my heart right up can can sort of keep me away from that that susceptible design a little bit, but also making sure that I’m I’m not still going in with a huge amount of underlying fatigue. And any any sort of final thoughts or anything you’d like to the listener to know just in terms of strength training or based on your last couple of years of experience, what’s what are a couple of important things that you think someone should know? Because when I have a guest on I, you know, because people

people, they’re experts in their own area. And I think they’ve got some real gold nuggets that you know, they learn over time as they work with more people. Is there anything there that springs to mind just based on what what you’ve done over the last couple of years? Yeah, look, absolutely, not not even in an athletic population, but the finally, the benefits of strength training are starting to become more well known. And it’s only just been recently that two strength training sessions per week have been added to the National Physical Activity Guidelines. And that speaks in volumes of really how important it is not only for athletes, but for everybody. And particularly for the ageing athlete, on average, as we age, past the age of 60. So in master’s athletes, who is anywhere between one to four percent of strength per year? And that’s a natural part of ageing. But what we often forget is that we can defend against

that that that strength loss. And if we’re actively strength training prior to that, and we get our peak strength at its highest point before that process starts to occur, the longer you’re going to be able to do the things you love. So swimming, cycling, running into those later years and that’s just one aspect of it, which is hugely important in master’s athletes or older populations. But also from from, yeah, more younger athletes, just the the influence and the benefits that strength training has on performance. And it’s a topic that’s pretty widely spoken about in sports, such as such as running and even cycling, probably not so much in the in the field of swimming. But absolutely as equally as important, like we mentioned, if if we can use those compulsory forces of that strength offered to propel ourselves through the water, they can have huge impacts on our performance in swimming as well from a from a younger, younger age.

So yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I know that watching swimmers grow up when they start young and they grow up. You do notice the swimmers, I’m talking like 10, 11, 12, 13, those that have done some form of strength training early on and we’re not talking heavy weights here. We’re just talking about some pretty basic body weight stuff and learning how to hold their body or move their body in a controlled way. Those that have got that sort of background from a young age, you can notice it when they swim. They just move so much better. They’re so much better coordinated. So it does help for them to start early, at least with some some really basic stuff, I think. And yeah, it stands out in the field of swimming, like it at like a state level, state championships, for example, those swimmers that are doing that kind of program, they, yeah, you can see it particularly for like those high strength, high strength requirement, strokes like breaststroke or butterfly,

but obviously the other strokes require it too. So it’s a, yeah, completely agree with you there. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And even more emerging evidence at the moment supporting the effect of some heavy eccentric strength in program in swimmers is really exciting to feed too. And I think you’ve seen up here with Jonah for a few AC sessions and he tends to love a good 10 second eccentric phase throughout some of those movements. So hopefully you start to notice that a lot of that is pain off in your swimming as well. Yeah, that’s why I’m rolling into a Friday morning training session pretty sore at the moment, which is as good. I just can’t work as hard on my own as I do when I’ve got someone there like Jonah working me. It’s, yeah, I get the shakes up towards the end, which is, you know, where you’re working hard then. I’ve noticed the exact same thing. And we have a lot of people that are off to go on in those 50 training sessions, because you think

you can push yourself pretty hard until, yeah, you get somewhat coaching you through it to the level that they can. And yeah, you do walk out feeling like you’ve done a really, really hard session and it’s great. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, absolutely. It makes a huge difference. And they can also just help tweak a couple of things with your technique on the machines and also just making sure that you are actually pushing yourself because for whatever reason it’s different. It’s like swimming in a squad. I can definitely work myself hard training on my own, but it’s very different environment compared to what I’m seeing with the group. So I think it’s worthwhile. And for those listening, so we’ve teed up an offer for those that are listening. If you’re in Australia, and you’re near a keys of gym, then Zach, do you wanna let them know just what they can do if they’d like to try what we’re talking about here? As I said, I’m a huge fan.

I’ve found it really beneficial. So for any swimmers or triathletes listening, I’d highly recommend it. So what’s the way that people can get started? Yeah, so the first stage of getting started is catching up with the physio and a Kaiser. Like we said, we need to then go through those assessment phases which include the strength testing components so we can really individualize that athletes program. So we’ve got an offer that’s heading into the Kaiser Great Australia Day swim coming up in January that we really tend to get as many people in utilizing strength equipment as we start to head towards that event and more people get out swimming during these warmer months. So you get an initial physio session which includes some strength testing, six supervised sessions in the gym like we were talking about earlier with your sessions with Jonah just to get you working to those levels that we know that people need to work at in the gym

as well as refine as much of the techniques as we need to. And then six weeks of strengthening in the Kaiser gym all for $180. Fantastic. I’ll put that link in our show notes so it’s clear for everyone how they can take that offer. And I think they’ve just got to mention the Effortless Swimming Podcast when they join as well. So I’ll put that in the show notes for anyone who’s just interested. And as we said at the start, it’s not a paid ad during the show and I don’t get any commission from this at all. This is just anything that I come across that I think is worthwhile. I think there can be big benefits for other swimmers listening. So Zach, I appreciate you being on the podcast. It’s always good to talk about all things swimming and it’s been a while since I’ve had someone talk about strength on it. So it’s always a good reminder, especially something important is that. So appreciate the time. Nah, thanks for having me, Brenton.

It’s been great. And I came to see you in here. I expect you know the gym bit later today. You read my mind. I’m actually looking at where I wanna squeeze in a session. So probably be an hour or two until you see me. You might look forward to it. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post A Different Approach To Strength Training with Zac Turner appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Marquest joins us in this podcast episode to talk about his early struggles when he started swimming. From barely finishing 50 yards to completing 1000 yards without stopping. Marquest shares his experiences, what he’s been through to achieve this. Enjoy

01:02 Swimming Background
9:00 Doing Half Ironman
09:30 I Gotta Start With Something
16:52 But Swimming
25:53 Signing Up For The Stroke Analysis
35:53 Kicking Hard
44:18 Climbing Up A Mountain
47:10 It’s Not Comfortable But I Am Not Dying

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Watch the episode on YouTube:

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 Quest Mix. Quest, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, man. It’s a pleasure to be on. I’m excited to even be in the position to talk swimming with someone based on how horrible my swimming was when I started out maybe a few years ago and even as recently as a few months ago when I signed up as a stroke analysis member. So it’s great to be on for many reasons. Well, I’m excited to have you on because when you sent that message, maybe it’s like a week or two ago, you basically said I swam 1150 yards continuous. And so it wasn’t a fluke the first time I did it. I was like, that is that’s awesome because you started like we started working together fairly recently. And your progress over that time has been really, it’s been really impressive. So I thought it would be great to have you on the podcast to share what you’ve changed and what you’ve gone through to, you know, go

from almost the beginner swimmer, you’re making 1,500 meters and kind of struggling to get further than that to then where you’re at today, being able to swim over 1,000 yards continuously and just feeling much more comfortable in the water. So to sort of kick it off, what’s your background with swimming? Did you learn to swim as a kid at all? Or is this just something you started as an adult? Yeah, so originally, like didn’t learn to swim as a kid at all. No swim lessons, anything. And the interesting thing is I recall growing up, I grew up mostly just south of Seattle in Washington state. And I had friends who would go to the lake during the summer and I always wanted to go and I think my parents were always told me no, but were really concerned because they were like, you don’t know how to swim, you might drown in the lake. But at no point did click for them or for me to say like, let’s get swim lessons.

And then you can go to the lake. It was just like, don’t go to the lake. So all throughout my childhood, no swim lessons didn’t do any major swimming. At some point in like my late teenage years to early adulthood, I came to believe I had the ability to like mimic breaststroke so that I could like, if I fell into a pool, I could I could mimic that. And that would get me out of the pool, which maybe happened once or twice in life. And it wasn’t until I took my first job after grad school, which was based in Southwest Georgia. And there just like wasn’t a lot to do wasn’t a lot going on. So I found all sorts of ways to fill my time that I stopped and thought like, it’s a little ridiculous that you don’t know how to swim. And your best case scenario is maybe you fall into a pool and you mimic breaststroke and then you won’t drown that way. So I actually signed up for an adult swim class. This was at the age of 25 in at the YMCA in

Southwest Georgia. And this adult swim class was taught by a teenager and just like a bridge version of this story is, you know, I’m already pretty self conscious as a 25 year old going to this adult swim class. As it turns out, I was the only person who had signed up for that session of the adult swim class. So when I arrived, I check in at the front desk and say I’m there for the adult swim class, which is, you know, I had to get over a bit of my embarrassment to do that. And everybody, the person at the front desk, they called the manager over who was managing the facility was like, what are you talking about? There’s no swim class, because they had internally canceled it because I was the only one to sign up. Nobody had told me or called me or communicated with me about it. So here I am in my swim trunks. I’ve got my flip flops on and I’m just like, it ends with me sitting in the facility manager’s office just like explaining like, you know, everything

I’ve shared with you so far, like, no, I never took lessons as a kid. I don’t know how to swim. I got up the courage to sign up. And so basically after hearing my sob story, I think she’s felt bad enough for me and ended up there was a lifeguard on duty who was a teenager. And she asked her whether she would be willing to just like start teaching the like four week series swim swim class, which would only be me. And, you know, I don’t want to put too much on the young lady, but suffice it to say, she was non plus about the idea of teaching the swim class that day and certainly not teaching me, which she made clear with her facial expressions in the office to her boss with me sitting there just looking up there. And she’s like, you’re going to do it. So we head out and it’s like me and this young lady and she’s going to teach us one class. And I get in the water and she’s asking me about my history of a swimmer so she knows where to

start and I tell her all the things I’ve told you. And she says, all right, well, you say you can mimic breaststroke like show me what you can do. And at the same time, some of her friends from school were at the pool. And so she’s sitting poolside talking to them. I start doing my mock breaststroke and I have pretty decent upper body strength. Don’t know any form other than I’m just doing this. And like, I’ve got my goggles on, I kind of put my head down and I’m going. And I finally just get to the point where I’m like, all right, I’m a bit tired. I feel like I’ve shown her enough what limited skill I have. So I stop only to realize I’ve swam into the deep end. So I push my feet down and I then can’t touch the ground. And I look down and realize it in the deep and I freak out. I start flailing and struggling. I can kind of see out of my blurry goggles with water splashing all over in front of me that I seem to have

caught her attention. And I just start doing I play out, you know, I play out what the fear I’d had my whole life of like, well, you’ll fall into a pool and you’re going to have to use the spot to get back to the shallow end. And I get back over to her and she goes, is everything okay? And I was like, no, swim lessons over for the day. And so that was my first swim lesson. And that just wasn’t a good start for me trying to get comfortable in the water. But with that said, I never had any fear of the water or putting my face in the water or anything. So that was how I started with swim lessons. And I finished that series really didn’t end up with any more skill than I started with, which was, all right, I’m not going out to anybody’s lake or river for recreational swimming. I’m not coming to a pool for recreational swimming. I’m not swimming laps, but I feel a little bit more confident in my foe breaststroke if I fall into a pool

because it’s battle tested, it’s field tested at this point. So I kind of left swimming at that point, felt like I’d check the box and at least taken an adult swim class and I left it alone. So flash forward to, so this was, that was when I was 25. So that was probably 2008. So flash forward about a decade. I’ve had a few jobs in my career. I’ve moved around a good bit and I’m living in New Orleans and I get the bright idea. I have this buddy Trey Monahan and he and I take turns putting the battery in each other’s back to do kind of these crazy things. So we signed up for and ran ultra marathons together. We signed up for and trained to do the Murph, which is this kind of really physically involved what’s become a CrossFit workout, but was started by this Navy SEAL that was killed and action and a workout he used to do on military bases and it basically involves doing all these pull-ups, push-ups and squats with a 20 pound

vest and I’m not a very big dude at all and not super strong. So the idea of being able to pull that off with the vest on seemed impossible. And so Trey and I signed up and did that together and it all the common thread is, you know, I personally and I think Trey shares this vision and thought like to sign up for things that seem physically impossible when we sign up for them. And so we kind of centered around this idea of doing a half Ironman. Mind you, Britain, I have never done a triathlon in my life at the time in 2018 when we decided on this. I did not own a road bike or any bicycle and my swimming skill at that time. I had left off a decade earlier with my four week swim class with the YMCA high school teacher. So as far as I’m concerned, you know, I am a runner and I was a runner and we done ultra marathon at that point. So the running piece of it fine cycling. I can get there and but wanted to sign up for this because

the idea of being able to swim 1.2 miles still to this day seems impossible. It seems more probable now after working with you. But in 2018, I was like, I’ll never be able to do this. So let’s sign up for it and try it and push ourselves. So 2018 that the we’re gonna do a half Ironman and really where I need to put my focus is swimming. So my buddy Trey he can swim has been a good swimmer his whole life grew up and as a his family had lake properties and so they’d spend summers on the lake. So he would would have been one of those friends who was going to the lake that I would have just not been able to join. So I got to get swimming right. And so my next foray into swim training was I thought, man, I got to start with some some basics. I talked to a few folks who are traffic triathletes and triathlon coaches who had done half Ironman’s in New Orleans and gotten pools and they were like, man, your swimming is really bad, you got

to get some basics down. So I found a local swim class by this guy who I don’t know if this is his real name or just a monarchy goes by because it makes sense in his profession. But his name is Mr Fish. And so he was teaching children’s and adult beginner swim classes. So I signed up for the 10 week series with Mr Fish or might it was 10 lessons, it might have been two lessons a week with Mr Fish. And the first day I go, we get in the pool and it’s me and maybe four or five other adults. And you know, the first thing you know, Mr Fish has everybody do is like, let’s spend 20 minutes getting comfortable with the water. And so we’re putting our face in the water and blowing bubbles. And it just was like, that was not my mode. And to be clear, I’m not denigrating anybody who starts at that point, because there are people who you got to start where you got to start. But I’m highlighting that because I think in some of what we’ll

talk about, one of the things that kept me from progressing initially was I had this concept and I would hear over and over that you have to get comfortable in the water to be able to swim well because relaxation makes it easier for you to apply to float those things. And I struggled making that click because I’m not afraid of the water. Like even though I swim like trash, like, I’ll get in the water, I’ll put my face in the water, I’ll try to float in the water. And as long as it’s not in the deep end, and there’s no real risk of drowning, like, I don’t have that in like entry level, level of fear of the water. And so Mr Fish started everybody with kind of blowing bubbles. And I was just like, oh, man, I need, I need the cliff notes of this, I need to flash ahead something because like this is, I know what I need to do. I’m on a mission. I’ve got to be able to swim from 1.2 miles and I’m not going to get there blowing bubbles in the water. So we

largely did that. And like they, you know, Mr Fish was great. I think for the lessons that he provided for really what his target demographic was, you know, I came out of those 10 sessions with probably like a greater confidence where I think I could comfortably start at one end of the pool and swim to the other end and not worry about drowning in the deep end. Like I’d swim past the deep end and to the other side of the pool. So that was progress, but no one near the progress I would need to attain to to be able to swim the half Ironman distance. And so I started talking to more half Ironman coaches, a few folks who get who are kind enough to give me pointers on swimming, but really I kept running into the same problem of folks would say like, look, I can train you in your overall triathlon training, your overall half Ironman training. And I can even give you swim sets as part of that overall training. But there weren’t a

lot of folks who were swim specific coaches geared towards working with people who were generally athletic and had this goal of swimming distance for whatever reason, but starting at the beginning. And so it was kind of this gap of a need. I didn’t need the uber beginning coach like Mr Fish, but I also wasn’t advanced enough to take the swim sets given by the triathlon coaches. And so something significant happened in kind of my my swim journey. I ended up taking a new job and moving to New York and I met this guy who

runs an organization or a group he calls can also in a W stands short the abbreviation for can and will. And the whole focal point of his organization and the philosophy is similar to the very thing that guided me to sign up for all these physical feats and for me to sign up for a half Ironman knowing good and darn well, I don’t swim. The idea is that you’re pushing your mental boundaries and limitations. If you believe you can do it and you put in the time and energy, then you get it done. So he and I put in some work in pools in New York. He really was the first person and coach to push me and was the first coach to be in that kind of sweet spot of I understand you’re an athletic person, you have this significant athletic goal, but we need to start you with the basics and we’ll push along the way. And so we were starting to work at a good clip had gotten to the point where I could probably swim 50 arts without feeling need to stop or being

completely exhausted. But ended up having to in that training because I have had Crohn’s disease since my last year in college. And it just started to with the change of the new job, I was traveling a good bit. The New York pace of life is a bit faster and a bit more aggressive and just like things went completely haywire. And so ended up getting really sick on that front had a rough end of 2019 that was a rough 2020 generally all together aside from the issues with the pandemic, but also ended with me having three major surgeries at the end of 2020. So it just put a halt to any of my physical activity being sick from Crohn’s for most of that year and then trying to recuperate from surgeries. And so got through those three surgeries in August, October and December of 2020. And then, you know, January really kind of renewed my my focus, my verb, my like desire to push myself kind of in many forms, but really physically because I

after all the surgeries, I had just such a renewed appreciation for you’re not promised physical well being in health. And so if you find yourself with it, you know, cherish it and do with it what you want in the time that you have it. And what I choose to do is really try to push myself, you know, to see what’s possible and really exceeding like mental boundaries. And so I really started to focus and fixate again on this idea of doing half Ironman because in my mind, I had unfinished business. And it still seem completely impossible to be able to do the swimming portion because where I’d left off midway through 2019, I can only swim 50 yards without being completely exhausted. So I started working with some physical therapists based in New Orleans, these guys, the Raj and RT who run the stride shop and they focus on physical therapy with runners. And so we started working on trying to get me back to running form because

that’s always been my base to the extent I consider myself an athlete in my adult age, I’m a runner. But really what they helped me do was when I walked in to see them for the first session in January of 2021, post the three surgeries, like I was struggling to stand up straight because I just kind of been hunched over and kind of really feeble and not able to walk more than a few blocks at a time without getting exhausted. So what they helped me do with the ultimate goal of getting me back to running was just really start to rebuild my body. And so we went through that process and maybe about five or six months into that where I finally was comfortably jogging and running and standing up straight and able to work out with the good folks at Cypress Fitness and lifting weights and felt strong in my body. I just kept I started to probably and I want to say it was May or June. I just started often to hear like the voice in the back of my head

saying but swimming, you know, you’re hitting these strength sessions and my trainer is Brian with Cypress Fitness and like I was doing stronger than I had been and like feeling good and every time he’d like put significant weight on the or hand me significant weight. Whatever the exercise was I do it and I swear I would hear this voice but swimming and the same thing with the strideshop guys like I started running and like got from walking to jogging and I’m running again and I finished running five miles for the first time and feel good and just have it here but swimming. And so I started to go down that rabbit hole again and so started the same process where I’d left off a few years before I reached out to triathlon coaches that live in and around the New Orleans area. And it was kind of the same process folks were incredibly generous with their time met with me at pools. Watch some video that my girlfriend was kind of up to

shoot with me in pools. And it was back to that same spot of like, look man, here’s the exercise you need to start you need to be able to do the swim work. These are the swim workouts you need to be able to do to start down the path of training for a half hour. And people gave me advice about, you know, what I needed to do to get stronger in swimming. But these folks are triathlon coaches, not really just swim specific coaches for athletes. And so they’re like, I don’t have a lot of time to just meet you and watch you and help you focus on swim. And so I started getting in the pool more because one thing I heard heard consistently from folks is you have to swim, you got to get in the pool. So I started forcing myself to go three times a week at minimum, no matter how much time I spent in the pool, no matter how much I many yards I swam just go to the pool, get in the pool. And I even signed it up, I signed up for after a recommendation

from a friend, I signed up for a quarter of tower 26. And those guys are top notch, I’ve heard. I know, I think you’ve either been on coach Jerry’s podcast or vice versa, or maybe both. So I think that they are really good coaches and have like a great program. But where I, where it wasn’t the right fit for me was again, that same problem of I joined in during the race ready phase. And I would look at some of the swim workouts. And I was like, race ready, man, I can only swim 50 yards without without stopping and to give some context, because I know the one of the big reasons you wanted to chat with me was there are probably a lot of folks who listen to your podcast, who consume your content and social media that are similarly situated in terms of starting off and trying to build significant swimming ability. When I say I could swim 50 yards, and then would be gassed or tired. And I timed this because I kept having the conversation with people and

they wouldn’t understand what I meant when I said I’m guess I, I would swim 50 yards. And I would need at least three minutes and 45 seconds before I could swim another stroke. And I wasn’t like swimming 50 yards, taking three minutes and 45 seconds of a break. And then swimming another 50 yards, that was if I wanted to swim another 25, like that’s how gassed I was. So, you know, I had access to all of the, or the, to the Tower 26 workouts, kind of it came out week by week, and I would look and I’d be like, I’m not doing four sets of 100 anything, I can’t do one one and one of the big things that jumped out to me that made me think like I’ve got so much work to do and this might not be the right resource for me at this time was like they would have you put in your 100 yard, your best 100 yard time. And I was like, zero, I can’t do it. Basically can’t do it. So I got nothing. And so I think at the same time, as I was starting to realize like this

might be a more advanced resource than will work for me at this time, I signed up for the effortless swim annual subscription, which, you know, you know, well, I need to explain to you your product, but like it gives you access to a lot of the workouts and lessons and videos that you have available. And I was like, okay, I’m going to just start consuming content. I’m going to watch YouTube videos. I watched a lot of effortless swim YouTube videos. I watched the Tower 26 YouTube videos. There are a few other resources where I just like I’m a visual feedback learner. So when I’m trying to do something, I want to watch people who do it well do it. I want to then try it. And I’m usually best if I can videotape myself doing it. And I can watch it and I can see the difference between the way the person who does it really well does it and how I do it and what’s off. And then I can do that as a loop and try to get better and better. So I just started

watching as much video as I can. And I started getting in the pool. And I would go and I would work out and just like I was getting more fit. And I know this because just by watching more video doing as much as I could of the Tower 26 workouts and just modifying them to my ability, which to be clear, if they listed for four by 100, I was doing eight by 50 with like a good three minutes in between. And it just that would be I would either have to I wouldn’t do eight by 50. I just do two by 50 to so that I wouldn’t be in the pool for hours and hours. And so I finally got to the point. I want to say it was July or August. So late summer. I swam 100 without stop. And I can’t remember the exact time. I think this is right. But it was like 214. And I was when I say I was gassed. I got out of the pool. I was that today because I thought I might have an asthma attack and pass out the pool and drown in the shallow end of this pool. I was swimming.

But I was so ecstatic that like, I could put a time as slow as I thought it was that I could put a time into the Tower 26 page. But it also made me realize like, okay, there. I have the ability to progress. This rate of progression is too slow to be able to swim to do a half Ironman by 22. But it is it is a more significant rate of progression than going from 25 yards to 50 yards over 10 years. So I’ve been optimist by nature. So I was like, all right, we got something to work with. And I think it was around that time that I know exactly I was struggling to remember what caught my eye about the effortless swim stroke analysis subscription. I know exactly what it was. I was listening to one of your podcasts. And in that particular podcast, you advertise that you were going to offer like, stroke analysis of one video for a member, you’re going to pick somebody at random. And I was like, Oh, let’s see if this is not being worthwhile. So I sent the

link to my video, wrote you a note. And then it just got me thinking and I sent you a separate note asking for details about stroke analysis, the stroke analysis subscription. And I realized, you know what? If I want to fully commit to this, you seem like from all of your content that I can consume. You really understand swimming. You have a good brain for it. And I was like, look, I’ll pay for the stroke analysis, we’ll try it for a bit. And either we’ll see some more significant progress than going from 50 yards to 100 yards in two months. Or we won’t. And I can at least say I tried it. And I will say that I’ll confess that I like a lot of people these days, before making that decision to join the stroke analysis membership, really fell victim to this idea that there’s a hack for everything. I think that a lot of ways when I was watching YouTube videos of swimming, or listening to podcasts about swimming, or getting advice from local

triathlon coaches or people I had the benefit of talking to, you know, I kept thinking like, oh, you know, there’s one type of workout. If I just do that type of workout three times a week, then by you multiply that by however many sessions, and in two months, I’ll be swimming. And it just ain’t that it ain’t that you got to put in the work. It’s not nice to take it to it, is it? No, not at all. Not at all. And so I signed up for the stroke analysis. And it has been phenomenal not not to overly plug you on your own podcast, but I I give credit for my progression from somebody who at best could do 100 yards without stopping to now. I can I’m going to have to swim this week. I’m going to comfortably be able to go out and do 1200 yards without stopping to having the stroke analysis subscription. Because one, I think you you have amazingly high swim IQ in terms of coaching, having been a swimmer yourself. I think your level of patience

was phenomenal and helpful. And then for me in particular, that audio feed or visual feedback loop that I described earlier, which is the best way I learned. It’s great because then I’m getting the benefit of not only I can watch all the swim video of people who swim really well that I want on YouTube and throughout the effortless swim general subscription that you have the videos you have available. But also then I get the benefit of watching my swimming and then having your feedback and analysis of my swimming so that it highlights and pinpoint exactly what I’m doing wrong and what I need to focus on. And we just keep sending videos and we see what gets better. We see what kind of what got better and maybe what got worse. And so that’s that’s been that’s been, I think the difference maker along with a few other things. But I realize I’ve also kind of been I ran you soup to nuts. I want to make sure I have a gut. I have a few

more things to share that I think were helpful in terms of what were the difference makers for me getting me to the point where I could swim more than a thousand yards without stopping. But I want to make sure I’m I’m talking about the things that you think will be helpful for your listeners to. Yeah, well, I appreciate the sort of history of your swimming there because it’s particularly that first lesson you got as a 25 year old. I didn’t know about that and to come back and be willing to swim again when you’ve had that experience. Yeah, good on you because you know, it’s it takes a lot of courage to I think for adults to go to the pool and accept I’m brand new at this. I don’t know anything. And they’re just being in your bathers sometime like your swimsuit. You know, that alone could be enough of a deterrent for people to want to start swimming. So I can tell you I had all of it, my friend. And I went through this. So I was going

to public pools in New Orleans and I’d had friends who were swimmers in high school say and a couple like reading going down the rabbit hole of researching triathlon swimming technique. Everybody was get some jammers, get some jammers, you got to have jammers because that’s going to reduce drag. That’s what’s going to make, you know, you look like a real swimmer and I will I took a pair of jammers to the public pool in New Orleans and there was a kid swim class happening and I will tell you it was like one of those record stop moments when I came out of the locker room with my jammers on all of the moms watched me get into the pool and I was just like this is this is horrible. And then on the flip side for I had a spent of being a member of a master swim group that I would get up and go swim and try to swim at five in the morning. And it just was past my skill set at the time. But having had the bad experience at the public school public pool

with the jammers, I then just wore regular swim trunks and then all these folks are in jammers and speedos and they’re looking at me like the smuck who doesn’t know what he’s doing. So to your point of just having comfort in your own skin and going to a place where you’re not used to being in and around pool. So everything is mystifying and you always feel you’re worried and more self conscious about taking the wrong step or being viewed as a person who’s an outsider in the space. So I’ve had that too. Yeah.

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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. Yeah, absolutely. And at the end of the day, yes, it’s not uncomfortable at the start, but I think at the end of the day, people are only really concerned about themselves. You know, it might be a brief moment where they look over and go, okay, there’s a guy. He’s wearing jammers. People don’t wear jams at this pool that often. So that’s interesting. But at the end of the day, they’re not going home and thinking about you. So that’s what I try and keep in the back of my mind if I ever feel like I’m standing out in the wrong way. But I want to go back to when you… So when you first joined the membership, you sent a video through for our monthly members call, which we’ve got one coming up today.

And so I analyzed your video there. And from memory, like one of the main things that we looked at there was you’re kicking really, really hard. Like I could say I was like, man, if I was kicking that hard, I wouldn’t be making 50 meters either. And actually I filmed a beginner freestyle course. So after working with you and there’s a couple of other swimmers in a sort of similar situation I’ve worked with recently in the stroke analysis membership. I finally filmed this beginner freestyle course for people who are struggling to swim 50 or 100 meters. And one of the things I had to do for that video or that course that we’ll be releasing soon was I had to do some of the incorrect things that we see people do, such as kicking really hard and over kicking. And when I was doing that, I was exhausted after 20 meters of it. So it’s like, okay, it’s a good indication of like what people are going through if I try and replicate that.

So from that initial video, it was a kick and there was something else but I can’t remember, was it the breathing? It was, I want to say kick and breathing. I’m trying to remember because I know another big thing early on but I don’t know if it was in that first video was, I was plunging my upper body too deep in the water. But I think that that came back. I can’t remember it. I don’t think that was in the first video. I definitely remember the kicking from the first video though.

So when you get that first lot of feedback, you went back and tried to change it. What happened there and what sort of did you experience? Yeah, and that, you know what? Now that you pose that question, the plunging my body too deeply, that’s what happened after I tried to fix it, right? So the kicking, right? As I’m, two things relate to that. As I mentioned, like I’m not a very big person. I have like a slender, have always generally skewed skinny but like when I’m working on and running more athletic build and so like decently muscular which just feels like I sink. And an interesting story had a woman I was dating who was like, no, everybody floats in the ocean. We’ll go out to the ocean, watch you’ll float in the ocean. And she’s like, lay your head back and I sank like a rock even in the ocean. So I think I’m one of those like negatively buoyant folks. And so I was kicking so aggressively because that was the only way I could get

what felt like any float. Because if I felt like if I slowed down the any at all my back end would just drag and sink and then the rest of me would eventually sink especially after 25 yards or the tail end of 25 yards. And so when you gave me that feedback, I really tried to be thoughtful about slowing it down but then it would also, it would then immediately cause my legs to sink. So then what I started doing to compensate was I started plunging my hands deep down into the water as I went like through each stroke. And so that kept my back end up but my front end was kind of like doing this in the water. So it created a new problem. Summer rain, yeah. Exactly. And then so I still was only able to do 25, 50 yards because when I would go for, I would plunge down and my legs would stay up. But when I had to breathe, I had to come up all of this. So I was like swimming like this, you know. A dolphin, but for the wrong reasons.

Yeah. I was thinking like dolphin without doing that highly technical, technical, great looking dolphin kick that like professional swimmers do.

Yeah, it’s, and over the, like we’re, and then after that, but like not too long after that you joined the stroke analysis. So you started working together there and it’s like, I’d describe it as being slow and steady progress and some things will change and then they might regress a little bit but we get back on top of them. And it’s just this continual, you know climbing up the mountain. I think they’ve climbed up the mountain with a yo-yo where it’s like, yes, improve me improving. Okay, I’m going back a bit. And we do that overall that trajectory’s gone upwards. And to the point where obviously you swam that, you know that continuous distance twice because it wasn’t a fluke. And you mentioned that it was a lot sooner than what you had expected to be able to do that as well. Oh yeah, absolutely. To be clear, the thousand yards, there was no timeframe or timetable to hit that because that was still in the impossible realm.

Like the thousand yards, maybe three weeks ago might as well have been the 1.2 mile distance for the full half Ironman swim, to be honest. I actually ended up swimming for the first time a thousand yards on accident because you and I had been going back and forth. And I think I had decided of my own accord,

I needed to push myself because I’ve been swimming consistently, because this happened in, I wanna say early November. So this is all very, very recent as of the time we’re sitting here talking. And as like at this point, I’ve been swimming consistently minimum two swims, two hour long swims a week. Usually I’m hitting three sessions a week. My swim cardio is up. So, and I’m also, I’d started running more distance. So like general cardiovascular fitness is much greater. So in my head, and as I was rationalizing it, I was like, it can’t all be cardiovascular fitness or swim fitness as I like accepted that excuse when I started. So some of this has to be mental block. So I just, I have to push and try. And so I started with, I think trying to do 200 and just accepting like, I’m gonna go to a pool where there’s sort of a few in New Orleans and the one that I use doesn’t have like a deep end. Like the deepest is maybe like five and a half feet.

So I’m gonna go to that pool and I’m gonna push it and try to do 200 yards because worst case scenario if, and I’m gonna push it to the point where like, not I’m worried, not I’m nervous, not I’m afraid like I physically have to stop and I’m gonna push to that point. And if I do worst case that happens is like, I stand up and I’m out of breath and it sucks and I’ll have to go to the pool, but I’m gonna push it. And so I went to do the 200. And I think somewhere along the way, like I did the 100 and it was okay. And then around 150, I got really tired but I was like, I’ve gotta do it. And somewhere along the way of doing the 200, I lost track and I ended up doing like 250 or 300 based on like the watch measurement because I just like lost count. I was so fixated on being out of breath and like freaking out that I was like, I don’t know if I hit it. So I gotta keep going, but I had hit it. And the keep going was like an extra 50 or 100 yards.

And so I think that was, I wrote you that first note saying like holy smokes. And what I realized is in the private coaching chat, you had already written to me that it was time to start pushing it because you thought some of it was mental limitations. And so I was like, oh, well, as it turns out, I’ve already met your challenge without knowing it. And you as a good coach is out to do, doubled down and said, okay, well now go 350 or whatever it was. I think it was 350. And so I was like, oh, shit. Okay, I’m sorry for that. But that was my real reaction after reading your note and knowing I was heading to the pool that day. Like, oh man, what a, okay. All right, I gotta do this though. I gotta do it. And kind of back to the point of hitting 1,000 sooner than I thought, 1,000 was not on my radar, period. I was not thinking about hitting 1,000 with any sort of timeframe other than I need to be able to swim 1.2 miles

to do this half iron man that I’d like to do sometime at the end of 2022. That was the only way I thought about swimming 1,000 yards. Instead, the metric I’d set for myself was when I started out on this, restarted this journey at the end of summer of this year, I said, look, by the end of 2021, you need to be able to swim 500 yards without stopping because in my brain, when I was looking at those Tower 26 and the other triathlon specific swim workouts, other triathlon coaches that tried to give me, like the longest thing on there was a 500 yard swim, whether it was a warmup, a cool down or whatever it was. So I was like, oh, if I can physically do that, then I can start the training and whether or not I can actually swim 1.2 miles. I don’t know if we get there, but at least we can start down the traditional path that everybody has talked to me about, which is like doing these swim workouts as part of your overall training.

So that was my goal. And so when you sent me back to the pool after doing the 200 of the 250 saying go for 350,

I was like, okay, so I get in and I’m doing it. And what I found was after about 150,

I was very tired and I was not breathing easy at all.

And that was a mental limitation for me because when I see videos of people who swim well, and even when I’m at the pool and somebody else is in another lane who I know is a good swimmer because it looks effortless and they’re gliding, it looks like they just slowly turn and they take a big gulp of air, maybe spit some out if they’ve got too much air, and then they turn and they go back to it. And it’s just like, after 150, I’m gasping. And so it was not comfortable swimming or it was not comfortable breathing. But after 150, I realized like, oh, it’s not comfortable, I’m kind of gasping, but I’ve got enough and I can keep going. And so I’m trying to count in my head, I got to like 300 and it was the same thing where it was, it’s not comfortable breathing, but it’s enough. And something clicked in that moment while I was swimming where I realized it feels the same at 150 as it feels at 300. So this isn’t, I’m out of breath and I need to stop.

This is, I’m uncomfortable. And this whole process is about pushing past discomfort. So we’re gonna push, fuck it, let’s go. So I keep swimming. And again, I kind of lost count somewhere between whether I was at 300 or whether I was at 350

and I said, let’s just keep going because now I feel confident that this is just a, it’s discomfort, I’m not gonna die in here. I’m not gonna like lose all ability to breathe. Let’s push past discomfort and let’s go for 500 because that’s the end of the year goal, which I felt for the first time after I hit that 200, I felt hopeful and positive that I’d be able to achieve it by the end of the year. And I said, I’m here, I think I could do it. And if I hit the 500 now, that takes the pressure off the end of the year and I’ll feel really good. And so I just kept going for it. And then I had lost count and I was like, okay, now I’m not sure if I’m at 400 or 500, but I’m still feeling that same feeling of, it’s not comfortable, it’s not easy, but I’m getting enough oxygen to keep going. It’s uncomfortable as hell, but I’m getting enough. So let’s just keep going. And then it just got to the point where I didn’t know,

I couldn’t tell whether I was at one measurement or a hundred ahead of it. So I didn’t know it was started with, I don’t know if I’m at 300 or 400, now I don’t know if I’m at 400 or 500. And I just found it was like, screw it, let’s just keep going. And so I just kept going. And I was like, assume you’re behind and just try to hit five. And once I hit five, I was like, I just keep going. And I just kept going. And I just kept going and I just kept going. And it kept being that same feeling of, it’s not comfortable, but I’m not dying. I’m literally not dying. And I’m getting enough breath to keep going. Okay. And then finally, I was like, I think I’m probably somewhere around like 900. This is incredible for the guy who three months ago was struggling to swim 50 yards. This is an accomplishment. I came up and I stopped swimming and I will tell you, Brenton, I looked at my, I swim with a Garmin and it set a thousand yards.

I thought for sure that was wrong. It also said that I’d been swimming, the measurement was 21 minutes. As a matter of fact, you know what, I don’t think I had my Garmin that day. I think I just had my Apple watch because I left my Garmin at home. And so the Apple watch I just like is more off with my stroke count. So I thought for sure it was wrong. And I was like, this is gonna end up having been, you know, freaking maybe 300 yards. And when it said a thousand and I’ve been swimming for 21 minutes for a brief moment, I thought, perhaps I did die in this pool and I am hallucinating. I’m in heaven. And I’m in this like, this heaven where I’m a good swimmer. All of a sudden this makes no sense. The idea that I swam for 21 minutes without stopping that was impossible as of when I got in the pool, like earlier in that session. And I will tell you my only saving grace. And I’m just so grateful that I had done this this day.

My girlfriend was out of town. And so I didn’t have her to shoot video with the GoPro in the extended kind of selfie stick. So I’d suction cup the GoPro to the side of the pool to be able to kind of send you some video of me doing what was supposed to be like the 300 or 350 assignment. And I was like, I’ll be able to count on the GoPro video. And I had done it and I think I even took two days to send you the note saying that I did the thousand because I wouldn’t send it until I had time to download the video and watch back and forth multiple times. And so it just ended up being this thing where it wasn’t anything I intended to do. I didn’t have a goal for when to hit a thousand. I had a goal for when to hit 500 which was like aspirationally end of this year. So yeah, I know that was the long answer to you asked me what was the timeframe for a thousand? I would say nebuary 32nd.

I didn’t have it in mind at all. It’s, I had so like I have a feeling in the next like six to 12 months, you’ll, you know you look back at where you were when you started and be like, wow, okay, that’s interesting. I can’t believe I was like struggling to make, you know, 50 meters and I had to take that, that rest and look, it might be the case now but it’s like it’s such a huge transformation. And what like, what sort of sort of comes to mind for me is with that breathing, I wonder if it’s just because obviously with the water you when you’re in the water, you get your breath and your face is in the water and you’ve got no option except to, you know to get that next breath when your face is out. So unlike being out, you can breathe whenever you like and that, it’s that uncomfortable feeling of you have to sort of control your breath that way. Do you feel as though like that’s the thing that was like, this is a bit uncomfortable

but I can do it. But initially it’s like, it feels like I’m going to die because I can’t breathe in when my face is in it. Does that sound like it’s right for you? No, that’s absolutely spot on. And you know what you and I have a side thread that you and I have had for maybe the last month maybe starting two weeks before I hit the thousand for the first time is this idea of working on doing some breath work. And I had started around the same time that I signed up for tower 26 and signed up for the effortless swim general subscription. I’d started some Pranayama training and I think the way you just described it is exactly and what I realized the Pranayama training has been grateful for helping to expand my lungs and like thinking about the idea of breath and breath control and being thoughtful about the breath and you sent me some helpful notes on what you do like even the little practice you have as you’re heading to the pool.

And what I’ve realized as I started to think about that is even with Pranayama training or anything unrelated even to swimming where you think about the idea of breath control, I think most people think about it in the concept of like, take a breath in, how much, how long can I hold that when you’ve got oxygen in? I think the problem with swimming though is and where the discomfort comes from is you need control and to feel comfortable on the exhale. Once it’s all of the oxygen is out of your lungs or you’ve expelled it all, that’s where the worry and the concern comes in, right? And so I think I did, I’ve started incorporating a drill that you recommended the sink downs where now before I’d start any swim, I’ll do six sink downs where it’s just essentially like I’ll kind of be up in the water and I’ll submerge myself and I’ll sit and I’ll just expel all the air out of my nose. And then once I feel like it’s all out,

I push out whatever I feel is left through my mouth and I’ll just sit there for like at least five seconds. And like my lungs are screaming, whatever part of my reptile brain is freaking out, like you moron, get out of here, you’re gonna die and that’s the same thing that’s triggering when you’re swimming and like you feel like you’ve exhaled and didn’t get enough air with that, whatever your last breath was and you’re not gonna die just from like a few more strokes like maybe if you keep doing that forever but like you can get enough air. And so the sink downs then you, once it’s out you kind of float back up, bring your mouth just above the water, take a breath and then do it right back down so that you get your body used to, because you have to get your body used to the rhythm and concept of you fully expel you’re gonna get a short window with your mouth out of water to breathe in air and you’re going right back to it

because I think the struggle for a lot of folks especially if you don’t have a background as a swimmer and with that rhythm of breathing is when you fully exhale and your body goes into this panic oh crap moment and there’s no oxygen in there then immediately the thought is I need to start gasping and getting air in as quickly as possible but you can’t do that if you continue to swim because you’re only gonna get that brief moment to get air and you’re back to the same thing. So it’s getting comfortable with okay

my body is freaking out, I’m fine. Get a little bit of air and then go right back to it. And that’s been exactly the way you described it and the only thing I would add is that bit of the freak out comes from holding your breath when there is not any lungs or isn’t any air in your lungs. Yeah, yeah, that’s good. So the Alex Butch’s podcast it was fairly recent so maybe three or four before this episode where he talks about breath control and that was really good as well as one I’ve done with Darren Stegianovic from Dynamic Breathwork. They’re really good episodes to listen to if anyone who’s listening to this podcast and yeah, I think like the breathing we don’t consider it very often because it’s just we just do it but when we do think about it and practice a couple of basic exercises I think it allows us to be able to control our head a bit more and a number of other things as well. Like for me, the one that I mentioned to you

is on my way to the pool in the mornings I’ll normally do some box breathing. So it’s five in, hold at the top for five, exhale for five and then hold at the bottom for five. And I’ll just do that 10, 15 minutes on my way to the pools I’m driving in. And when I do that, I find that in the main set if it’s a difficult one, like we’re working pretty hard. So on Mondays, we’ve been doing like a 800, four by one and then 600 and then four by one and a 400, four by one. And it’s like just getting faster and faster. I find within that set, I feel like I’m just, I’m under control, I’m keeping really calm and collected even though the pace is right up there. And I feel as though it’s because of that breathwork at the start where I just sort of put you in that parasympathetic

but you know, it’s that phase or that stage where you’re not, you’re not panicked, you’re relaxed and your parasympathetic nervous system is the one that’s sort of taken over there. And that’s like flight or flight, you know, it’s, yeah, we’re not in that stage. And so I find that sets me up really well. And the other one that’s quite beneficial too is holding your breath, holding it at that full exhale. So there’s a oxygen advantage is like quite a well known breathwork company. And one of the things that I saw them post recently and I posted it for a while is that when you have nothing in your lungs, it doesn’t take long for your mind to go, oh crap, like start to panic because you need to breathe. And all like, all that is, is just your mind, you know, panic is your mind panicking. And if we can just train ourselves to go, it’s actually okay. You know, it’s, you’ve got, you’ve got a long time. You’ve probably got a full minute

before you really have to start to breathe. And then, you know, then we can just start to get our mind under control. And so obviously we don’t want to get to that point when we’re swimming freestyle where we’re like, oh shit, you got to breathe every time. You want it just to feel normal. But I think it’s a good way to practice it. So what I’ll often do is like, if I’m walking somewhere, I’ll sometimes just like take a few breaths in and out and then I’ll exhale everything. I might walk 15, 20 steps. And by that time, like, oh crap, gotta breathe. And I’ll, I’ll just keep training that. And it’s just training my mind to be able to keep cool. And I know it’s similar stuff to what some of the big wave surfers do, is just training your head to stay calm. I think that last bit is a phenomenal suggestion, Britain. After you and I have started talking, I started doing the same thing, just like walking around or like sitting still

and holding after the exhale. And I don’t go more than like three or four seconds. And like my brain is going crazy. And I was like, oh, yeah, this is, and this is me sitting out here with as much oxygen as I want. And of course this is causing a freakout when I’m in the water. And this kind of connects to the point I was making in the beginning where I was highlighting that Mr. Fish would start with folks and say, let’s make sure you’re comfortable with the water. And I scoffed at that thinking like, I don’t, I’m comfortable with the water. I don’t have that problem, but I’m not, I haven’t been comfortable with the water because it exasperates this freakout in that fight or flight deal where it’s like, I, this is, I’m not okay. I’m not okay. But the more I’ve done work to say like, no, you’re okay. And then the sink downs are getting easier to tolerate where like, I’ll sit down there and like take five seconds whereas before it was a struggle to like,

as soon as all the air was out, I would be on my way up. I wouldn’t even be able to sit still for a full second. I’d have to because I would worry that something would go wrong as I was floating to the top for the breath. So I would cheat it. And so now sit at the bottom and then I’ll start to float up. And it’s exactly as you were saying, conditioning your mind to be like, okay, when you’re short on breath in this way, you’re okay, especially for a beginner swimmer who has issues with breath control, issues with breathing. It’s going to help you be able to swim further. And like the, the swim conditioning and the cardiovascular fitness will, will come with more time in the pool. Yeah, that’s right. And the other thing that one thing I want to mention there is that for someone listening to this, they might be newer to swimming in there similar to yourself a couple of months ago. Don’t feel like yet when you’re swimming,

you don’t feel like you have to exhale everything completely out of your lungs where you’re like, you know, you’re getting every last little bit out before you take your breath in. Like you’ll exhale 90, 95% of it. You don’t feel like you have to go that extra 10% because sometimes that can lead people to being like to just over exhaling and then they sort of struggle to get that breath. But the other thing is I, I reckon a lot of people similar to yourself a few months ago, some of that uncomfortable feeling comes from just holding the breath a little bit because when we, when we swim, it’s generally like you get your breath in, you kind of hold your breath. Yes, you might exhale a little bit through your nose but you’re holding your breath for a couple of seconds where your sort of lungs are out here, your sort of ribcage is stretched a little bit. And a lot of times that can feel a little bit uncomfortable.

And so even just that small, that small part of it can cause some of that discomfort. So in this beginner course that I put together, the very first thing is breathing, like Mr. Fish, you know, it’s like it’s an important, important thing. And one of the exercises there is like you’re just hanging onto the wall, getting the breath in, put your head in, hold it for two or three seconds and then you just exhale through the nose on the way up and you repeat that 20 times, 30 times because that’s a similar sort of breath pattern that you’ll have when you swim. And you’re just training that sort of breath pattern because a lot of people are uncomfortable in that breath hold phase where it’s two or three seconds. So I think that can be where some of it, some of it comes from where a bit of panic compared to just when you’re out of the water, it’s like in, out, in, out. There’s no hold at all. Yep. Oh yeah. So yeah, it’s a question.

I know we’ve gone for about an hour here. I really appreciate you jumping on the podcast because it makes more than just my day when I sort of see someone who like yourself who’s had these kind of results and from when you thought like swimming a thousand yards and it’s like maybe another year or two away to have that sort of confidence and belief in what you can do. And I mean, once you’ve done that, you could really, essentially you could swim 2,000 yards. It’s not really that much difference apart from a bit of swim fitness. So you’ve kind of got over that bigger hurdle of two or 300 yards, I think. So it’s awesome to see and yeah, I appreciate you sharing your journey on the podcast here because I know for a lot of people it’s hard to swim 50 or 100 yards, but to see that it’s possible, it really gives a lot of other people that sort of belief. Yeah, look, and man, I just wanna reiterate my thanks for having the opportunity to come on the podcast

and kind of share a bit about my swim background. It feels nice to be able to say that. Actually, just last week was telling my girlfriend and a few friends, I gotta stop saying I can’t swim. I was calling my swim sessions, my modified drowning sessions, but I can actually swim now. So I’m tremendously grateful to you and I’ll give a plug that maybe you won’t. Like if folks are listening, I would consume as much effortless swim content as you can, check out the videos on YouTube, listen to the podcast, and I would sign up at minimum for the general subscription because it’s not very much money. You get access to a ton of resources, workouts, other videos, and I would just consume as much of that as you can because that helped me tremendously. Yeah, I appreciate that question. I’m gonna add that beginner course as soon as it’s ready to the membership. So if you are listening to this in your, where Quest was a couple of months ago,

that’ll be available for members and you’ve got that opportunity as well to record some video and send it for our monthly call because I know for a lot of people, sometimes it’s just like, you just need like that one or two bits of information that’s specific to you to like just kind of take the handbrake off. And that’s kind of what it was for you with the kicking, I think, yeah, cause that was one of the big ones. And like you just don’t know what you don’t know, you know, if I was to go into like riding horses, I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have a clue what I was doing wrong, you know? Right, right, right. Sometimes you just need a little bit of help and that can sort of kickstart the journey. Absolutely, absolutely, wholeheartedly agree. So thanks again, Quest. And you will no doubt be keeping in touch, but yeah, thanks again for being on the podcast. Thank you, man. I appreciate you. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast.

If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post From Gassed Out At 50 Yards To Swimming 1000 Without Stopping with Marquest Meeks appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Ari Klau and he is a professional triathlete who started only at the beginning of this year. He essentially came from no swimming background at all and he is gotten to a point now where he swimming very well for someone who doesn’t have a background in swimming. His background is running, he was an NCAA runner and that particularly his strength but he is a very good cyclist as well. On this podcast, we explore what he is going through in the last year in terms of how he started with his swimming, where ‘s is he at now and some of those things he has worked on and focused on with his technique to get to where’s he at now. Enjoy!

3:15 Swimming Background
7:27 Start Of Training
9:38 Training Mindset
13:25 First Half Iron Man
16:04 Feel The Water
18:52 Finding The Balance
19:48 Making Some Changes
24:00 Video Analysis
26:35 Focusing On The Catch
30:21 Reaching The Minute Mark
42:21 “Feel For The Water”
46:44 Breathing

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Welcome to this episode of effortless swimming podcast my guest today is Ari Clough And he’s a professional triathlete who started only at the beginning of this year And he essentially came from no swimming background at all And he’s gotten to the point now where he’s swimming very well for someone who doesn’t have any background in swimming His background was in running and he was an NCAA runner and that’s particularly a strength But he’s a very good cyclist as well So on this podcast we explore what he’s gone through in the last year In terms of how he started with his swimming Where is that now and some of those things that he worked on and focused on With his technique to get to the point where he is now And you’d be surprised to I guess he where he’s at So one of the things he mentioned on the podcast was he he’s got a 2100 set that he does Leaving on 125 at the moment. He’s coming in around 112 and this is short course yard

So about 10 percent quicker than the meters But 112 is leaving on 125 for 2100 is is really good for someone with no swimming background Even for someone with a swimming background. That’s it’s still a pretty tidy time. So This is him with with nine months of swimming And I’m looking forward to seeing what he does over the next six six to 12 months and onwards from there Because he’s progressed immensely and I will be doing a video on youtube Looking at that improvement with his stroke and his swimming So watch out for for that one as well and on this podcast we talk about How a sequence of things happened for for arey from the the passing of his sister to then Going to leaving his full-time job to training triathlon full-time and getting a call up from Lionel Sanders to come and train with him in arizona And and in that time he’s also been building a bit of a youtube audience and following there And it just sort of all came came about with a

With a sequence of events that was quite interesting. So I really enjoyed this chat with arey. I hope you do too So let’s get stuck into 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

Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast. My guest today is arey clow arey. Welcome to the podcast Thanks for having me So why a friend of mine he sent me a text and he goes you guys check out this video Yeah, you get mentioned in it and He sent me to one of your recent videos that you posted on youtube That you’ve been working your swimming and you said you’ve been watching the effortless swimming videos So that watch down. That’s that’s really cool. It’s um that it’s been able to help And then I sort of you know, did a bit of a deep dive on What’s like what you’ve been doing and and what your story is and I thought I’d be good to get you on the podcast Just to to talk about that because it sounds as though you’re going through a lot of the things that Many triathletes go through with their swimming not coming from a swimming background, but more a running background and maybe some of the frustrations

And the the joys of swimming but the the up and down the roller coaster that that comes with it So I thought that’d be a good conversation just to to sort of see how that’s going for you So for those listening, what’s your what’s your background and what brought you to triathlon?

Uh, so I started running in in high school. So it’s a little over 10 years ago um freshman year high school joined the cross country team and just ran All high school then uh, it was good enough to get on the team at the university of virginia Um, so I ran division one for four and a half years Um, and just as I was starting to sort of figure things out ran a really good 3k um pandemic hits and the uh, my final outdoor season is uh, canceled so uh, decided to withdraw from my master’s program and started a full-time software engineering job Which was remote so ended up going out to seattle with a friend of mine who was running pro

With the the brooks beasts and they you know hooked me up with gear and you know I was doing workouts with them, but I got injured pretty quick

And I think the important detail is that seattle at this point is like october raining every single day so I bought a bike trainer to Just cross train every day. I was just like I need to have this close And I’m just going to grind on the bike until this injury heals up and So I started biking fell in love with it really quick and I you know, I was pretty good at it off the bat um and Also decided to start a youtube channel Uh, just sort of detailing my return back from injury and getting into biking and at somewhere along the line Lionel and Talbot Cox found my channel And invited me out to Tucson and I was like, okay, I’m gonna go I’m gonna go to Tucson And I’m gonna swim every day and see what happens. And so I started swimming I won’t say with Lionel because you know, he’s for all the Uh, flaky gets about being a poor swimmer. He’s still you know relative to the average person. He’s a very very good swimmer

um But yeah, so I was just hopped in there and even though I sucked at it I just I fell in love and I fell in love with training all three disciplines and

Just having multiple sessions every single day And then yeah, my current coach basically Invited me to new hampshire to train with him and his group and it seemed like that was the best fit at the time and uh, so that’s how I ended up back on this side of the country, but Um, that’s the that’s the rough outline of how I got into triathlon. So The time I went to Tucson in March. So mid-march 2021 Is when I started the training in the pool Wow Gee so I mean, that’s that’s really impressive in that we were talking earlier. So you’ve done you’ve done one half at the moment And only having swum for the last eight to nine months. Did you swim at high school or learned to swim as a kid? Like what was your nothing? I mean, I I not I was never on swim team, you know, I

There was one stint in early on my freshman year of college where I had a stress reaction in my foot so I was in the pool for about three and a half weeks and It’s funny to like think back on what I was doing because I I would swim for a half an hour and be like, oh my god I can’t stand this. I would literally so I think once I swam for an hour and I was like This is gonna be my long swim. And also I would just sort of go back and forth, you know, touch turning Nice structure or anything until until I hit time. Yeah

Some some laps would be hard some laps would be easy at alternate But yeah, I didn’t I didn’t have a concept of a warm-up and a main set and drills or yeah, I didn’t And you know, it was three. I I wasn’t keeping track of time either. So I could not tell you how fast I was swimming But yeah, so three and a half ish four weeks while I was out from running It’s the really the only experience I’ve had in the pool So that was like 2016 Yeah, gotcha and and then when you went to train with Lionel and you jumped in the pool What did you start with and how did it feel when you first began swimming?

Uh, what do you mean? What did I start with? Like did you were you jumping in to that with his training sessions? Or were you like just doing a few laps like how did you how did you kick it off? Oh, yeah, I mean day one. So his his coach, uh, Justin Slade great, you know, a great great guy, um He would I would sort of do the same set. Uh, that Lionel was doing but

Just like knock off a 25 or a 50 so that I would be able to make the interval So I was swimming around the same like time that he was and like he tried to Justin tried to line up the rest Um, but yeah, so if he was doing hundreds I was doing 75s that sort of thing um, and honestly day day one, uh, I I don’t even know if I made it, you know, 2,500 to 3,000 yards before my, uh, calf and and foot started cramping Um, and I tried to keep going and Justin was just like you’re you’re done. You’re not You don’t come back from that. So just try again tomorrow And uh, I was not happy because I was not I that wasn’t how I wanted, uh My first session with uh Lionel Sanders to go and I didn’t want to make that that sort of impression but Um, I did get to redeem myself on the track later that evening

Yeah, yeah, that’s well like the thing is it’s to come from Like when you’re jumping a triathlon Most people aren’t going to be good at least one of the legs when they begin and so I imagine it’s quite a humbling experience and you’ve got to accept or you’ve got to lose your ego and accept the fact that all right, I’ve got some work to do here And as long as I’m patient and I put in the work I can get there But it’s those initial couple of months where it’s that steep learning curve that I find can be the hardest with anything And uh, and I mean I found that with I’ve done a season of triathlon and the biking was not my strength And yeah, it’s just these guys are absolutely smashing me and it’s it’s a bit frustrating and You know sometimes it feels like I’ll never I’ll never get there, but uh as long as you can just persist. I think it you know, it can happen So what’s uh, what was going through your head those first couple of weeks when you started in the pool

Well, honestly what what you’re saying is is very similar to my experience running in high school Like I I’ve been around a lot of great runners and almost all the great runners I’ve been around Ran somewhere in the range of of 420 in the mile as like a high school freshman Um, and they were running just off the bat. They were running 17 18, you know So minutes some some of them faster for like their 5k in cross country like just starting out Um, and so I started and I was running I ran I just ran under 26 minutes around 25 38 was my first 5k in cross country and like I didn’t know what was good what people were running the best guys on my team were running mid 17s Um, but you know, I just got hooked on you know by the end of the season I ran just under 21 and so I got hooked on the just improvement process Um, and sort of just I mean that was the first introduction in my life to something where it’s like if you work really hard

You’ll continue to get better and I was like, well if I just keep working if I outwork everyone for a very long time Like I’m going to be really good at it. Um, and so it took me a long time to sort of get to get on a Division one sort of prospect level You know, it took me two two and a half years. Honestly, I wasn’t really getting any offers until my senior year of cross country. So in the fall um so that season was just good enough to um get on the roster at uva and even then I was uh Like I was a good recruit, but I wasn’t even the best in my class Um, and so I just kept the same mindset of you know, I’m going to be I’m going to be the best person on this team Um, and so my my experience running was was one very much of like I wasn’t good off the bat Um, and it was just if I attack this you know with Intentionality every day and uh, I keep working and and now I I know that I need to be smart about it

So I’m approaching swimming the same way of okay. I’m not good at this But that doesn’t mean that in 10 years from now I can’t be really really good and um So yeah, it’s just I knew I knew You know, I had a hope that I was going to be good off the bat and uh my my hopes were crushed pretty much immediately And uh, but that’s fine. That’s like that’s fine. Um, I’ll be shocked if they weren’t you know to not swim at all to then just like Doing well. It’s like Yeah, I couldn’t say how that would be possible It would be good. Yeah, I had no idea Uh, how you would just like understand how to swim properly like I know there are people who just run with great form Just starting out. They’ve never ran before and they just that’s how they do it But I don’t I don’t know how you would do that with swimming like how would you know? How would you be able to just feel that it’s it doesn’t feel uh I mean, I guess it feels natural once you know and once you practice it for thousands and thousands, you know millions of strokes

um But yeah, so I mean about my whole mindset, you know then and now was I’m gonna do this for five six ten years And I’ll be good then um, I didn’t uh I wasn’t like, oh, I’m not good at this. I’m gonna go back to running. Uh, there was never really that thought pretty much once I decided to go to Tucson and hop in the pool of like I’m doing triathlon and there’s really no going back

Yeah, yeah, nice. It’s uh, because I think the For a lot of people who you know come from a strong running background they And if they’re like thinking of dipping the toe in and they you know hit any sort of challenges like that It’s very easy to go. Okay. No, no, I’m done But if you’ve committed to it and you’re willing to put in the time then it’s a very different different story And you’ve said uh, so with your first I saw your first half Ironman the swim time was 29 minutes So around about a what’s that just over 130 like 130. Yeah some yeah 130 So something like that in the 130s, I guess And so and over and you said over the last three months or so you feel like your swimming’s really come along even since since then so In terms of like times in the pool and stuff. How’s that changed in the last couple of months?

Uh, well for one of the I’m way stronger. So the uh, the typical set we do we have a threshold set on Tuesdays and that’s um If you’re feeling good, it’s a it’s a really good marker of fitness. Um, and if you’re feeling bad, you’re just kind of in for a long day, uh, but And before before that first 70.3, I think, you know, I was starting at 10 by 100 on 130 and I was able to hit, you know, one 120 119

By and this was probably a month and a half. There’s maybe even two months into into swimming when I started doing Um changes sets instead of uh, justin

So yeah by the time I got to new hampshire, I think I had I had done 10 by 100 on 130 coming in on 115 Um, and so then my coach moved the interval down to 125 so I think I was still doing 10 on 125 It uh, maybe 12 going into main. Um, and then I sort of asked

Just give it give me just put me up to 20. I know you’re gonna give me 20 eventually. Don’t give me 12 15 18 20 Like just I want to go to 20 now and if I don’t complete the set, like I don’t really care if I miss the interval um and So it was kind of it was a big breakthrough when I was able to do 20 on 125 all at 115 or under Um, and so that was So I guess within the last three months I’ve gone from You know just getting to 20 on 125 uh to now 112 coming in for for on average Geez and is this this is uh yards for me. Yeah, yeah, short course yards. Yeah, short course yards I’d be in it. I’d feel a lot better That’s everyone on youtube always asks is this yards or meters? I’m like

If it was made as you um, you know, you’d be you’d be Uh, well up there at the moment, but I mean that said, you know one 112s in in yards and leaving on 125 with Eight nine months of swimming like it’s that’s good. So it’s uh, it sounds like it’s really come along What what feels different to you? What does it feel like now when used to mean compared to earlier?

Um, I I’d feel like I have a little bit more

Feel you know since I started swimming and especially, you know, Lionel is like mantra That he’s gotten from Justin is feel the water. Um, and so that’s the first like The first sort of thing I was exposed to

And so I uh, I can kind of tell

When I’m having a not necessarily a good or a bad day, but like there’s this weird when I

Start to swim harder, you know after after the warm-up we’re doing a prep set

Like I can feel myself catching. I can feel a lot a lot better rhythm with my kick Actually having the the focus to kick through the whole set, which was a big issue for me I would like kick a little bit And my kick wasn’t great anyway, but I would just sort of stop kicking once I got tired

I I don’t know a lot of it is kind of like hard to put into words. I just feel

there there are a lot of Form changes that we made as I mentioned on that video like I can feel myself rotating. I can feel myself, you know, sort of reaching forward and actually catching instead of just pushing my arm down

I can feel My my entry I used to go like way far forward and now it’s like my recovery into the entry feels a little bit more relaxed

I wouldn’t say I was ever like muscling the water But I feel like I’m gliding a lot more now like instead of just complete stops In between strokes like if I’m sort of leaving my my handout in front of me for for a hot second before starting to catch I feel like I’m still moving whereas before I My stroke rate was so high because I wasn’t gliding pretty much at all. So

I guess the the short answer is I’ve watched enough of your videos that I can feel like How to swim properly like I understand what it feels like to swim properly just from

Trying them my coach on deck confirming that I’m doing it right or whatever I’m doing looks good and being able to you know, just Transfer that through the whole set

You know, and again, I’m not I’m not focusing on What the time ends up being too much. I’m just trying to swim with proper technique for as long as much of the set as I can yeah Which is and that’s that’s perfect because it’s I mean, it’s for me. It’s finding that balance between Obviously, you’ve got to work hard. You’ve got to build your fitness and your strength And it’s good to get to that point of fatigue Where you start to break down and it’s okay to go into that sometimes But if you do it too much and you’re training the wrong technique, then okay, that’s not that’s not ideal So going into it a bit. Maybe you might have a few laps here and there where it’s like, okay That’s that’s really starting to fall apart. It’s a good point to get to but the fact that you just focused on drilling in that technique I mean you you look at some of the Elite swimmers the competitive swimmers and it’s just all about holding technique under fatigue and under pressure

And if you look at like a even 100 freestyle, it’s typically who can hold their Technique that last 10 or 15 meters because as soon as that goes then you you see them drop off So it doesn’t matter if it’s 100 meters or if it’s You know 1.9 kilometer race. It’s it’s it’s all the same So what how did you go about making some changes or improvements to your technique? It was obviously focusing on it when you’re swimming. We’re doing drills. We’re doing any sort of like I know

I was speaking to Dave Tilbury Davis on a recent podcast and he and Justin’s name came up And he was talking about a good like stroke rate set that he got from Justin It sounds like Justin’s got some really good ideas on On how to build that awareness and that feel for the water. Is there some things that you picked up from him?

No, honestly

What and I was only I was only working with Justin for you know, two two and a half months Um, he basically took the approach of you’ve never you’ve never swam before so just don’t muscle the water and Like you just need to get some some fitness onto you right now He didn’t uh, there were a couple things that like my arm was crossing over pretty bad um And he was like hey, you’re you know, he pointed it out and was like try to fix that but he wasn’t um Like hammering me like hey, you’re you’re still doing that wrong. You need to fix it. Um So the the process of Changing my technique really started when I came back to New Hampshire, which and that was the whole reason I came back is I I um Had been told enough and I felt like I had seen enough that I if I want to be the best I need to have perfect technique, you know I the difference for me in this sport is going to be can I can I swim front pack? um Because there are guys who can pretty much run and bike as well or better than I can who are also swimming front pack

so if I want to compete I had to swim front pack and um I truly believe that that starts with having just really really good technique and so my coach James is is all about that and uh Pretty much every day. He was just like here. Okay, uh, well to start like these are the things you need to work on And every single day, um, he would tell me hey, you’re you’re slipping your arms still crossing over or when you get tired your arms still crossing over or um You know, you’re not really rotating at all. So I mean so the crossover that was just to fix it while you’re swimming no drills, but like rotating would do lots of lots of just side swim and six kick switch Stuff like that. So there were there were drills But a lot of it was just hey pointed out feel how to do it correctly and just try to make the change while you’re swimming um, and then I sort of took it upon myself Because I I’ve always just wanted to do more when I was just running

um You know, I bumped my own mileage up to 110 You know, I peaked at my biggest week with 113 miles and um, I was like, well, if I want to be great at running I’ve got to be running 105 to 110 miles a week. Um, So, you know, what what James was having me do wasn’t enough So I would do, uh, you know ankle stretches where I where I try to sit on my feet Um for basically as long as I can so I can you know reduce the drag from just having a you know L shaped uh ankle And like shoulder stretches like, you know, putting I don’t know if people are going to be able to see it But just like all right, how can I get the most like dramatic catch? It felt like it was um limited by my shoulder flexibility So I’d just do that at night and then I started sort of making my own drill sets from Videos I would watch like catch kick was just I was just going back and forth just one arm in front of me kicking um switching off and uh

Um do a lot of uh fingertip drag just to to work on my entry So a lot of it was started with just trying to correct it while I’m swimming and Now it’s definitely a mix of both. I I do a lot of drills. I try to do drills Pretty much at some point Every day, you know, either on my warm-up or on the cool down um But yeah, so it was a mix of you know, James pointing something out and just trying to fix it on the go and um learning what it feels like by doing a drill and then Um, that gives me a little bit more of an ability to fix it myself while I’m swimming Without necessarily having someone there to tell me I’m doing it, right?

Yeah, and with the so you’ve got a go pro Had we’re using that as a reference for how you were swimming as well Was there much that you sort of did with your own looking at your stroke that way? Uh Sometimes yeah, so I James would take we take a lot of footage and you know, he’ll he’ll do video analyses for us And honestly, it’s great. I wish I could I could pull it off Maybe I can send it to you after but basically what what happened was this was it had been a while between

Video sessions and this was kind of when I really started hammering like basically catch drills because I was just like I need to have a great catch and Uh, so I had I had fixed a lot of the the stuff that James said was was kind of having me work on like that The arm wasn’t crossing over very much. Unless I was getting tired Um, I would like lift my head up really high before I was breathing But basically he watched the video and he’s like hey, I hadn’t I hadn’t watched this so we’re just going to analyze it live Um, and he was like astounded at He said my catch was it was too dramatic He’s like you don’t even need to go need to go that far because I basically wanted to get them You know the sun yang like 90 degrees All the way, you know elbow just in front of my head and then forearm completely vertical So like I had been trying to swim like that um For a while and so I was uh, I guess swimming easy and trying to really practice my catch when he was taking the video

um So, uh But yeah, we do we do, uh, you know video analysis, uh Somewhat often, you know every few weeks or Uh, yeah, four to six weeks something like that. Um to sort of pick on things to work on

But yeah, a lot of it a lot of it is just Um Like I’ll do something and just sort of had James confirm. Does this look good? You know, I don’t not not that I even need to work on it or to look at it because I sort of trust him Just tell me that it looks good and I’m like, okay. I can feel it. I’ll just keep doing that Um, you know, so for uh for something like my my entry on my Right arm. I’m still sort of entering too far and it’s causing causing some other issues later on in the stroke

So I watched a video you made about like feeling out proper entry and you’re like a fingertip drag That’s a great drill. So I started doing it. I was like, okay. Now I completely understand how this feels And basically didn’t even need to look at what it looked like Um, and then James ended up confirming like, okay. Yeah, that looks better and it’s you know fixing that that sort of issue You’re having later on Yeah, that’s that’s it’s interesting about the catch because I’ve had a couple summers that I’ve worked with where They’re focused on the catch and trying to get that perfect 90 degree position but as you were saying like it’s It’s not as strong when you’re there and at faster speeds, particularly for the open water Like you’re not you’re better off having a faster rating and less of a high elbow But the fact that you can actually get there is a good thing because you can always reduce how much you’re doing it

So, um, it must be pretty good to see that change after after working on it And it’d be great to see some of those if you’ve got them some of those like earlier videos And compare them as you’ve improved over time That’s why I wanted to jump on a podcast first Before doing like a youtube video just to sort of see what this process has been like for you

Yeah, no, I think I there’s definitely a lot of older footage out there Um, and it’s for some of it’s like kind of painful to watch it was honestly Um, I’m just now getting to the point where I don’t mind watching myself swim um, but for The first I don’t know seven months. It’s been like four to one or two months That I I’ve been able to watch videos of myself and say oh, I like I like the way that looks But for the first, you know, seven months, I would see a video and be like man, that’s like that’s what I look like

And it’s very hard to understand What I’m doing that ends up looking the way it does like for kind of a long time

I was I was almost like snaking my way across the pool. I don’t know if that’s a common thing that you’ve seen but You know my my legs would sort of just sway back and forth and I would Like splay my legs apart because it you know, I felt like I needed to balance myself out when I was trying to rotate um So yeah, things like that like a super wide kick and obviously the the uh crossover um, you know, it was like some pretty dramatic crossover at times in my arms that just Uh, and then the lifting my head to breathe thing There were just a lot of little things that once I knew what what it was supposed to look like I was like, man, I can’t believe that’s what I look like Um, but again, it’s still sometimes really hard to feel what is making it look like that

Yeah, gotcha Well, it’s what I found In the last couple years as I was doing more analysis and more analysis like it when I first looked at I’ve got I’m like I’ve got no idea what I’m really looking for here when I first started filming people and analyzing it And then just the more you do it you Pick up more and And I I’ve you know similar for watching if I’ve ever recorded myself like the first video though I looked out of myself I was like there’s no way like that’s what I look like because I thought again I thought I thought I thought I thought I was perfect And I’ve swum since I was a kid and all of that and I look at and get oh man There’s a lot that I can work on here But it’s for me I found it just it’s really motivating to see those things that you need to change because then if you actually know What you need to to improve on every that just gets me to the pool that much easier Because I’m motivated to get in and work on it

So that’s why I think and I don’t do that much video analysis because it’s hard to find someone to record me sometimes but It’s yeah when I do it. It’s like yeah, okay This is this is great because I can see maybe there’s half a second or a second here per hundred if I can just improve This aspect of my catch and it’s actually and what I say to the people when they come to our clinics is like The people who are the worst swimmers they’re like oh my god I can’t believe I look that way But it’s like how you should be happy because you’ve got the most room for improvement And you know, there’s some people there who are looking for half a second Well, you know, you can find 10 or 20 or sometimes 30 seconds per hundred So the worse you look the more Yeah, the more improvement there is which is a good thing in a way. Well, so I’m actually curious. I got a question for you um, and I have no idea if you would be able to to even give an estimate uh from

Just watching that that one video But um When I was you know, swimming, you know these threshold sets So 115 116 um, and now I feel like I’ve changed A crap ton of things with my form. It just everything sort of feels better and um I’m I’m still swimming 112, you know, we’re talking four four seconds a hundred um, and I’m getting some fitness and but

Like if I If I woke up with uh, completely flawless technique, um

How how much faster like do you think there is to go, you know, like how much is it? um For me at this point or for somebody who has, you know decent There’s a lot of things I can fix that that would add up like you said half a second here a second there um Like are there 12 seconds per hundred worth of things that I can fix that have nothing to do with fitness Or is it more like okay, that’s four or five but getting down to say hitting double lows on a threshold set that’s going to be mostly fitness or You know 50 50 like how how would you how would you estimate, you know, what it takes to get to swimming double lows?

Yeah, gotcha Definitely a combination of both because if you think of this the swim speed equation you’ve got your distance per stroke and then the rate at which you’re taking those strokes and so a good way to a good way to Kind of boil it down is you can see how many stroke strokes it’s taking you at the moment per 25 And then and the rate at which you’re taking them. So, you know, sometimes you get it from your garment or Recording it whatever whatever it is And then you can you can look at it and I think it’s good to play around with those Numbers as well. So let’s say Okay, it’s a 25-yard pool. You’re pushing off for it’s called five yards and so you’re swimming for for 20 yards Let’s say you’re taking 20 strokes. So you’re moving one yard per stroke. Just throwing numbers out there And then let’s say your stroke rate is is one stroke a minute. So one stroke a second So you’ve got a rating of 60 strokes a minute

So if you sort of put those two numbers side by side, you can increase the stroke rate a little bit or You know increase how far you’re traveling each stroke in that way You can sort of figure out what needs to happen to get down to that minute mark Because you know that it’ll basically spit out what you’re currently doing with a with a 112 Obviously, you’ve got the turns and the push-offs and stuff, but

Yeah, and so that’s that’s a way to sort of figure it out So it’d be if I was to look at it It’d be good to record like a just a 112 if you’re swimming in that 2100 set see what that looks like Get your stroke count get your stroke rate and then sort of play around with it So it’s definitely going to be a combination of both because if I don’t know your stroke Your stroke rate would typically be in that kind of set

Uh, I had no idea that’s something I’ve never paid attention to actually

Do you have a um, do you wear a garment or anything? No, I don’t I don’t I don’t have like a swim a swim capable watch so Yeah, and I I don’t think I don’t think that’s a bad thing like I prefer to go Usually no gear sometimes I wear the form goggles for like a longer set But there’s nothing wrong with not going any gear that would potentially give you a half decent reading for what your stroke rate is But if you record if you had a hundred recorded We could just I could use like us we could you can time it basically and and figure it out from there So, yeah to have a and then we can do this. I mean you’re racing next week So we don’t want to change anything but it’d be good just to record a hundred About that pace and just see see what the numbers spit out and go from there Because there’s a good chance of stroke rates going to be one of those things Well, like at a 10 percent increasing stroke rate. So going from 60 strokes a minute to 66

Yeah, that’s that’s gonna play around a fair bit with you with your eventual speed if you were to hold the same Distance that you’re doing each stroke. So yeah, that’s how I’d kind of look at it I think that’d be a good exercise to to do

After you after your race

Yeah, no, absolutely. That’s something I mean um, and does that so And if the stroke rate is good, then you say, okay, I must be Producing too much drag and then it comes back to form or is it?

Yeah, I mean, I guess that that’s that that’s probably just a Something something I need to look at and again, there’s that’s one of the things I love about swimming is there’s there are so many Like angles to to attack it from and right now it’s sort of just been okay. We’re working on my fitness and we’re trying to to make You know, so I would say minor technique changes. Um, just to straighten things out and um

Like looking at it from uh from like an analytic perspective like that Okay, how how many strokes am I taking and how far am I getting for each stroke? That’s something that people have commented on on youtube videos where and that’s something I never listened to either When someone comments on a youtube video I want it I want it from somebody like from somebody I trust like Um, so that’s I know you need to work on distance per stroke and I’m like Of course, I need to work on this like wouldn’t be great if I was just getting more distance every stroke like that I don’t know. I guess that requires more, you know more fitness more um the ability to put pull back harder. Um, but yeah, just

Approaching it from uh Almost a mathematical perspective. Um, that’s definitely something I’m gonna do now because I I had never like heard of doing that

Yeah, let’s and look at you. I think you’re so right like first of all Some of the comments I see on the youtube on my youtube channel like uh, like like I’d say 90 90 95 percent of them are great Uh, and then there’s five or 10 percent where I just look at it and go. Oh my god. You couldn’t be more wrong Like just on like on maybe what a swimmer’s doing or what they should focus on Uh, I just go. Oh my god. I hope this I hope no one sort of listens to that that advice So yeah, it’s uh, I take everything with with a grain of salt but Uh, and like I think when people say like someone says you need to work on your catch. It’s like, okay Well, that’s great. It’s really a throwaway comment. I was like, what do I need to to do? Like what’s how do you go about it and distance per stroke? Like there’s so much that goes into it because it’s it’s just a combination of your Like your drag how much drag you’re creating and then the the propulsion like it’s it’s those two things

And so with the drag often it’s body position your feet kicking out Maybe entering in the wrong spot and then propulsion is like your kick your catch and then just working that together And and syncing it up together. Well, so yeah, there’s so much to to work on but it’s it’s good to keep it simple And it sounds as though you’ve had that approach and I think that’s why you’ve probably Made such good progression alongside obviously doing the work and Yeah, and training hard Like it’s yeah, I think that’s it’s a good way to go because I see people just they get they take on so much and then they’ll It’s like a bright shiny object. They’ll hear something and then go, okay I’m going to work on that but they already know what they need to work And they sometimes get distracted with the wrong thing that might not even be relevant to them So it’s very easy to to do that and I’m mindful of that when I do my videos because I know I talk about lots of stuff

But you know, really it’s like half the stuff’s not going to be relevant relevant for the person watching Uh, it’s because yeah, something else might be more important Yeah, and I mean that’s the the comment I made in in my latest video was I as you know, we made a lot of changes We’re not planning. I’m making too many more. I didn’t mean that as far as oh my my technique is is very near flawless There’s more so like we’ve made a lot of a lot of changes that I’m not used to And I can’t hold them all the way through a set So like there’s no reason to bring to to point out any other changes And it’s like, you know, the video you sent me said, you know, my my arm’s swinging out wide Like maybe that is something my coach had already noticed and he said well, it’s not it’s not worth it to

To bring that up to have him even be thinking about it

You know, it’s it’s it’s more important for for me to Uh focus on the things that I am sort of able to focus on, you know, just my my mind can only Sort of control so many things at once And just totally ingrain them so that they they become just, you know, muscle memory And then once I feel like okay, I’m I’m swimming naturally now like through a whole threshold set with

Technique that I only used to be able to sort of force when I’m swimming easy when I’m really really focusing on All right, keeping my arms straight keeping my head down. I’m, you know kicking with good rhythm and you know, I’m rotating Once that just becomes completely natural then I’ll say okay, what’s Where is the half second per hundred or second per hundred that I’m, you know, leaving on the table now

Yeah, that’s that’s right. And that’s why I was like, uh, I don’t want to give you because Said you’re not trying to change too much. It’s like, uh, like and That’s why I mentioned to you like your stroke looks looks good. And I was really I was really impressed with how it looked

Having known that you sort of just started swimming recently, but only nine months ago Like you’ve done done a great job. And it’s uh Yeah, it’s the strikes looking good. So I was I was really impressed with that and uh, I mean like I’m excited to see What the next six to twelve months brings for you because Yeah, like for someone who hasn’t come from that background a lot of things you’re doing really nicely So um, I thought that was good, especially with the catch as well like that That takes a while to develop. So I was quite surprised how good your your catch was under the water And I mentioned that left arm was drifting out a little bit

Again, it’s like we just focus on what we can focus on for now. So Yeah, did you feel like you’re holding Do you feel like do you feel like you’re holding better water? Then you’re used to with that with the catch. Does it feel better? Uh, oh, yeah Absolutely, and that’s uh, I was I was saying earlier when I start to swim Faster or harder after warm-up. There’s this like Again, I can’t I almost can’t explain it, but it’s like when I’m warming up. I’m just I want to say sloppy But I’m not really I’m not really trying to go fast I’m just swinging my arms around getting the yards in and then um, on most of our sets We have a prep set four by hundred on 140 So I’ll I’ll typically start in the you know, 118 And then progress down to you know, now I can sometimes on a good day when I’m feeling good I can go I I’ll hit a 108 on the last one. Um, but it’s like that first one and I’m probably swimming 124s, you know, maybe around that range while I’m warming up and then so I start going to 118. I’m like I

I feel like I’m Catching water, you know, like I’m pushing water back like purely just backwards

It’s the way the way it like goes around my arm and the way I’m actually propelling myself forward Um was that that was a change. I only really started to to Feel when I started working on my catch So I guess hold water is a that’s a phrase. I’ve only heard a couple of times and definitely a very like swim swim specific term but I guess that pretty accurately describes the the feeling Of you know, I’m catching while I’m I’m pushing it backwards and I think it kind of comes down to like I understand how to move myself Forward now. I can’t always do it perfectly Um, and I don’t have the fitness to do it really hard for a really long time Um, but I’m really just starting to understand what it feels like

Yeah, that’s it’s good to hear and I’ve heard like I think I think it’s Brett Sutton has he said He he doesn’t like the term feel for the water because he reckons he’s seen two Triathletes ever that have had feel for the water, but it’s just a relative term like You’re you doing what you’re doing now compared to what you’re doing eight months ago Like now you’ve got a much better feel for the water So it’s just a it depends how you interpret the term and I I like it like it is you do actually feel it on your hand on your forearm When you get a good catch and it’s the feedback I get all the time when people make a good change to their to their catch and pull so I I think it’s important and to hold that water and keep pressure on it because A lot of times people will use that catch part as like the power power phase too much Like what you might have been doing in the beginning said you’re pushing down a lot on the water

And so all the force is going down and maybe you’re going too hard in the beginning But it should be this gradual build up of pressure through it So the catch yes, you need some pressure But you don’t want to muscle it too too much in the beginning You just want to gradually sort of build it up because Otherwise, it’s just you’re moving too fast too hard and then you lose that that pressure So it should be this this exhalation through the stroke and it’s that that’s this finessing that I think It comes with more experience and just figuring out what what works and it sounds as though it’s really come along well with you Yeah, well, I mean that’s interesting that you said Brett said that he’s only seen like two triathletes who can You know really feel for the while. I’m not sure what that means, but I I take it I take it pretty literally um In terms of the first time you get in the water and you don’t have a swim background

Like, you know, I didn’t even know what was what was going on around me There’s so much stimulus And I’m just trying to move myself through it. But now, you know, probably millions of strokes later

I One of one of the technique things that we changed was my palm would I don’t know if this was like a soft hands thing where I was I was too tense But my palm would sort of start to come up like you would if you were looking at a face like a Front-on video of me coming towards the camera

Just at like head level you’d be able to see my palm right before I start catching

And now I can it’s Maybe I still sometimes do it again when I’m when I’m getting tired and you know I try not to tense up but sometimes it happens But I can quite literally feel the water hitting my palm when I do it now Because it’s something I become like so attuned to to try not to do it

that Yeah, when I when I go in and my my wrist is cocked upwards a little bit like I literally can feel the water on my palm So I I don’t know if people say feel the water to mean literally or it’s some

I don’t know extra awareness that you have after doing it for a decade plus being in the water every single day But I think there’s definitely a literal component to it. Um, yeah, I’m I’m starting to get

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it should be should be taken that way

Yeah, it said I like what you said about the sort of soft hands because I’ve got that term from a guy Wayne Goldsmith who I’ve learnt quite a bit from and it’s like it’s that point of just enough tension to hold the form But you don’t need anymore because anymore is wasted and it’s kind of like if you were to go pick up a Glass you’re not like grabbing it really tight where you could crush it You’re just picking it up where the hands sort of stay soft I think it’s a similar thing when you when you’re swimming it’s that yeah finessing of it because when you’re relaxed you move better And particularly I think through the catch and pull you just feel it so much better when you are Relaxed as well. And it’s something that I see quite a bit like a lot of swimmers are so like they’re like this And they’re just trying to like, you know, cut their hands or hold as much water as they can but it’s um, they they burn out

You know, they just 50 hundred meters in you just can’t hold it that much Oh for that long with that kind of tension three or four arms and hands Yeah, absolutely. I mean there’s um

This I mean it’s your whole channel effortless swimming and everybody everybody said, you know, it should be it should be smooth Um, and I’m getting this it’s actually really frustrating is I can

Uh, I can swim faster when I’m Bilaterally breathing breathing every third stroke instead of every other when I’m breathing to one side Um, and I can’t quite figure it out. But when I I only breathe to one side when I’m swimming hard like during a threshold set Um, and for one it feels way less balanced than every third stroke where I’m where I’m switching sides Um, but it’s sort of at the point where I’m so relaxed Breathing every third stroke and it feels like there’s so much more symmetry and I can I can just I feel the water better um where Uh, I’m not literally swimming faster But it’s like the effort it takes me to swim 115 breathing bilaterally versus swimming 115

Breathing to one side is like almost the same even though I’m getting You know 150 of the breaths, which is still for me in the early stages. It’s so huge, you know, because my breath control um and co2 resistance is uh

Has been sort of an issue more so than uh fatigue is just like I can’t breathe And that that becomes one of the biggest issues. But um, I don’t know if it’s because I I’m just more relaxed breathing to both sides and

Or if it’s a symmetry thing, I don’t have you ever have you ever seen that but it’s I’m swimming Um, this morning I swam, you know 112 in the third hundred of that prep set and then I swam 112 in the fourth one swimming way harder breathing to one side

Gotcha, so just the Yeah, I mean if you can if you can sustain every three then go every three if it’s if it’s easier and Have you done much open water swimming? Like practice lately, uh, not not lately not since Uh, it’s been over a month. Um, it’s just been way too cold our last open water swim It was like 55 degrees in the water and it was everybody was like, please like let’s Let us out those. Um, yeah

Um, but we were good to say

Yeah, gotcha and we were more comfortable breathing every three in the open water or every two. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah every three I’m just I I always feel yeah, yeah more comfortable to breathe in every three

Cool. Yeah, but it’s it’s just not enough. It just feels like not enough oxygen almost You know, I can’t I can’t swim hard doing that. It just builds up too quickly Hmm Yeah, gotcha um Because what what it may eventually what may eventually happen is over the next couple of months six to twelve months You might be able to hold your same distance per stroke and increase your rating So the arms are going over a bit quicker, which means it’s going to be Every breathing every three it might be enough air for you because it’s going to be less of a gap between taking a breath So that might be like the optimum goal in the long run But I think it’s look it can be good to practice and there’s no hard and fast rules for what you need to do Like you could do and actually what what I will sometimes do and I assume in a 50 meter pool But I’ll do like breathing every two off the wall for the first like four or six strokes

And then go to every three and then into the wall I’ll breathe like every two for the last five meters just to get a bit more air because it’s the turns that normally tire you out And especially coming off the wall It’s like it’s when you need a you need a bit more air in so it could be worth doing like Yeah, two two and then threes all the way down and you might breathe the two into the water to get some air Coming to that’s really interesting. You bring that up because that’s um one Kind of big thing like I don’t I don’t ever ever swim with a pole buoy um when I started uh when I got to New Hampshire, um my coach said every time I give In the set I say, you know pull buoy plus paddles or whatever anytime I say pull buoy You swim with fins and so for the past You know six months instead of pulling I swim with fins because um again, there was that ankle flexibility like I just had the worst ankle mobility

um And I just wasn’t kicking and so I guess partly the fins are like a reminder You should be kicking use them try to go fast but they it uses it’s Like there’s so much more oxygen being consumed because I because I’m kicking and because the fins

Provide more resistance. So kicking is It’s faster, but it’s like it’s just harder. Um It’s always harder for me to just swim For me to swim, you know fins and paddles than it is to just swim normally Or swimming with a pull buoy for that matter So I when I I’m supposed to sort of be swimming steady, which one we’re swimming just easy. It’s You know coach has us swimming every or breathing every third stroke But I just like it builds up too quickly. So I pretty much do exactly what you said I take two off the wall And then I switch and then going back into the wall. I take, you know, I Every other again And that’s a bit more sustainable, but I’ve just I never thought about doing that When I just swim normally because in my mind, I’m so like you’re supposed to be breathing every three and Um Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, like I’ll play like that It feels like cheating when I take a when I take a breath every other

Yeah, it’s it’s fine. I was talking about this exact same thing with my Sister this morning who was talking about a friend of hers who sort of just started swimming and often we take these These things like you got to breathe bilaterally. You got to breathe every three We take them and be like that’s gospel. I’m not really shouldn’t breathe every two But there’s there’s no rules for it and it’s okay to to mix it up. I mean Sun Yang in his 1500 where he broke the world record. He breathed I can’t remember exactly, but it was like it was

Off the wall. I think he went like left right left. So he breathed like every stroke And then he went to twos and then I think at halfway He might have done like a maybe a three and then he started breathing to the other side and then into the wall He’d go he breathed three strokes for each stroke into the wall. So it was right left right into the wall Something along those lines. So yeah, and so there’s no coach that will say I want you to breathe like each stroke Because it’s like, you know, it’s not the right thing to do but you know, there’s there’s always exceptions. So And I do that in my sort of longest longer distance sets is if I’m getting tired Maybe I will go like a left right into the wall and no, it’s not the best thing in the world to do But for longer distance, it’s you’re better off getting the air in so it’d be good to mix it up and Yeah, you could play around with that just to You know give yourself a few more options

So it’d be interesting to see If that if that helps and look yes, it’s good to train like that breath control But sometimes when you just you know try to Sustain a time for like that threshold set. You I’d say you’re probably better off just doing the two two three three and so on

And I mean I feel like I’ve gotten an entire a Free coaching session for the you know the past 50 minutes by coming on coming on this podcast Yeah, I’ll look I look I love I love helping people with their swimming because For me, it’s like I just I love swimming and I’m just I really enjoy Um, the technical side of it I love going in there and doing it and like I come out of the water and just feel You know so good about it and the more people that I can sort of help with that I think the the better and for me like Yeah, if I was to Looking six or 12 months down the track to um to see you just continually improving your swimming like I’d get a real real kick out of it so that’s why I I enjoy doing this sort of stuff and um yeah, so it’s If there is anything along the way as well that um, yeah, you ever would like some um

An opinion on or anything. I’d be happy to help and I know I’ve gone for a while here and we’ve only talked about um swimming because obviously it’s a swimming channel, um, but I was Curious about your YouTube stuff as well. Like it looks like you’ve gained quite a a large following there and like what do you

What do you sort of put that down to to to have that following grow in the last nine months? Uh

I use the term clout siphoning. Um, so my my, uh It’s not all that I gotta give myself some credit, but um my one of my best friends I was living with I would be surprised if you had found his channel. He’s got a youtube channel called the athlete special and it’s um It’s it’s a running youtube channel. He’s had it for Years, I don’t know six six years at this point. It’s got 65,000 subscribers so I was living with him um for You know the better part of a year and I was in all the videos and like started to uh Make a name for myself just from being in the videos Uh, and so when I started my own channel, um, he was just like I already started a channel and like Day one three thousand people like subscribed basically um just just from People knowing me from from his channel Um, and then it you know, it felt like it grew pretty organically because it wasn’t it wasn’t all runners coming over There were people who you know cyclists triathletes

um, who didn’t know who Spencer was who uh, uh For a while, I just completely assumed that everybody who subscribed was a previous subscriber of spencer Um, and there’s people I’ve met along the way that just they were like, I have no idea who that is I you know discovered you a long time ago. Um and then uh Going to Tucson and like being in videos with Lionel and having Lionel in my videos Literally doubled doubled the subscribers just because of like the amount of exposure that he has Um, so those were like two

Big jumps, you know, they I would imagine accounted for you know, at least half of the subscribers Maybe more that I have just in terms of exposure that people like uh, that that’s where I was discovered. Um, so I definitely had a lot of a lot of help, um as far as like Being able to have uh being a good position for people to discover me um So that’s uh, you know, I don’t know that I’m Doing anything really special with the videos. I make I make my own music for them. Um, which is not like, uh, I don’t Like publicize that every video. Um, I get a lot of comments like what’s this song? And but you know, I just try to make it like a

Uh It’s not like a running youtuber a triathlon youtube. It’s like a me youtube, you know, I talk about I love I love espresso. I love Um, I love making music. I love endurance sports. So I’m just I just make videos essentially about myself

And uh Yeah, I guess, you know, I’ve been in a fortunate position to have a lot of eyes On me through like different people that I’ve trained with basically

Yeah, yeah, it’s cool. It’s um, uh, and I mean You are your own like easiest topic to make videos about actually like you whatever you’re interested in You know, you can make a video for it. So it’s um, yeah, it’s it’s a good approach And I think just from reading some of the comments like I think they’re Just the openness, you know, they’re willing to share like the the ups and downs and all of that That’s that’s a big factor And I think that’s why people like liners videos and I like sam longs videos and stuff because they’re just willing to share Share everything. Um, which I which you know, which is people don’t want someone who’s just like pretends It sort pretends that it’s all, you know, rainbows. It’s it’s hard work along the way. So Um, I think that that can certainly help too and the how do you how do you find it doing that like sharing? You know, I’d say whatever it might be 90 of what’s what’s going on. You know, how do you how do you

Find that compared to being someone who’s Not publishing it and just you know going and training and everything. Do you do you prefer it? Do you Like it at times and not others like how do you find that part of it? No, I don’t I don’t I don’t mind it at all. Honestly, it’s like I for most of my life I was just not really sharing anything and doing nothing But it was like but people close to me or people not even that close to me I feel like I’ve always said what’s on my mind. I’ve been a pretty open book Um, you know never tried to make things seem like Something they were not And so it feels very natural. Just Like when I decide the film will work out It’s like it’s I’m making a video regardless of how the workout went

Like I don’t even know how I would like just That would kind of be unfortunate if someone Scrapped a video that they were already planning on making because the workout went poorly

That’s just it’s never like really an option that that crossed my mind Um, and then especially just how much, you know early on People appreciate the the openness Makes it that much easier to To keep sharing and not it was like even if everyone was like, hey man, shut up. Nobody cares like I would still I would still keep doing it

And like there was this there’s this Girl I met a couple weeks ago. I was like, oh, I love your channel

You’re helping toggle toxic masculinity like because there was that seat I don’t know if you watch the the first 70.3. I did I was just like crying after the race Um And uh, I don’t care. It’s like that’s yeah, that’s what happened. I was extremely emotional and upset Um for and you know crazy stuff happens when you’ve been really really pushing yourself for three and a half hours four hours um But yeah, people people really really appreciate seeing it. So it does make it even easier to like um, my friend Johnny who who helped make that video like you Uh, he was he said he was too scared to take the camera out, but I was just like sitting there really upset I was like take the action camera out because I knew I knew I like needed to um Just say what was on my mind and a lot of it is for me to go back and really like that’s what I was thinking Like I can’t believe I said that you know any second. I’ll watch that scene like I

Like it makes me uncomfortable to watch it as I’m sure a lot of other people felt that way But that’s the truth like that’s those are the things I said. That’s what I was thinking in that moment um, and that’s kind of the whole point of Having a youtube channel is like you can go I can go back and say this is what I was swimming there This is what I said and thought about that workout right after I did it. This is what I thought the next day um This is what I thought about everything You know six months 12 months later, uh, so it’s uh It’s like it’s like a training log and it just it wouldn’t be It wouldn’t be of any use to me if I wasn’t honest honest Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s great. It’s it’s like it’s like a training Diary that you know, you can look back on and just uh and see how you’re feeling how certain sets went and and like it sometimes like I try and stay away from the comments and and stuff but like I mean

Most people on who commented my videos are like they’re great. Um, so I don’t I don’t sort of mind it too much But it’s um and even if someone said like you know why posting this no one cares It’s like well all right Why are you watching it like there’s a lot of options out there for you and no one’s forcing you to watch this so just uh, you know, you do your own thing and um Yeah, and and the people who enjoy it will will continue to watch it and you know with that honesty stuff like it’s um Yeah, like I I’m probably I’d say I’m probably more reserved than than what you are mine’s more just like it’s swimming It’s not necessarily my life and stuff But I remember a couple years ago when um good friend of mine and somebody who worked with me in the business here young guy He passed away and I hadn’t posted videos hadn’t posted podcasts for a while because I was just not in the mood And I put out this short podcast about why just explained that he’d he’d passed away and the amount of emails and support

I got back um From from people was like it was amazing and I think you know when you are when you are honest about that sort of stuff Like people will um You know they they feel like they’re better connected to you. They have a better understanding of what you Of you and what you might be going through. So it’s um, yeah, it’s it can be a good thing to to share. So Yeah, I don’t know if you had he had come across this video The video the video is just called life is hard. Um, and uh, so my sister passed away about about a year ago and um, I had I was literally like finished with a video The day before she died and I found out and then a couple days later. I was like Well, I still have this video and I’ve committed to making this like youtube. It would be weird I feel like it would be weird if I didn’t Say something like if I just kept making videos and pretended it didn’t happen and like so I just I started the video

And I was like, hey, this is what happened. I don’t I don’t know what the hell’s happening going forward But I made this video a couple days ago. I don’t really care to like actually finish it But here’s just some clips would be running and like that’s the video And just yeah, the amount of people that were like the screw making videos like, you know, you know, you don’t Oh anything to us and the people who were just like, I’m you know, sorry for your loss like it was overwhelming Just like I felt this sense of community on youtube of all places so Yeah, again, it just comes back to like It feels so worth it for me to Share, you know as much as much as is appropriate to share. Yeah

Yeah, I agree and it’s like and when you have stuff like that happen it cuts through all the crap of like, you know, like

Just all the like the the divisive um, all the different like tribes and stuff that you know people always going up against each other in News and views and all this sort of stuff It’s like yeah cuts through all of that and it sort of brings people together which um, which seems rare and rarer these days so that’s um Yeah, I’ll just uh I find it it’s nice when that happens and you can sort of forget about all the uh, All the divisiveness that’s uh, that’s happening at the moment. So um, yeah, it’s that’s a small upside Those things can bring people together Yeah, I mean but in Because of that I decided, you know, I gave me this whole, you know different outlook on life Um, so that’s why I quit my job in software and decided I wasn’t quite All in I wasn’t I wasn’t swimming yet. I was I was I was actually swimming like Twice a week, um, but there wasn’t much structured to it. I was mostly just running and biking

Um, so this was like pre-toosan Um, but that’s kind of the reason I was able to just go and start training full time. It’s like, you know, this What most people would think is this horrible thing happened to me and I Um, decided to to take a path that without that having happened. I would probably never have really started swimming What did it made you what did you reflect on that made you quit your job and then take up triathlon like what what was that? Um, the party is like I just I didn’t like my job very much. Um Not that I wasn’t like, oh, I hate my job. I’m unhappy. I want a different job It was like I just wanted to be training like that’s all I ever wanted to be doing Um, that’s all I ever wanted to do in high school and college too, but it was just like, you know I have to get my schoolwork done That sort of thing but then I sort of uh

It made me think do I have to have this job or is there a is there a way forward for me Where I can put all my eggs in this basket and maybe make it happen And so I yeah, I decided I was just going to do it and I yeah, I couldn’t really think about um what I mean, well, what happens if I fail is I end up right where I am now Which is in my childhood bedroom in my parents house, which is not the worst thing, but you know, um, yeah Uh, yeah, I just decided like that. I wasn’t going to wait anymore Uh, you know life is just too short. And uh, if I’m really unhappy doing what I’m doing I’m gonna do what makes me happy. So that that was really the Like I just did what I wanted to do anyway, uh without really thinking about the consequences Yeah, it’s worked out thus far Yeah, that’s great. I mean I was um, I started effortless mean last year university. It was like a sort of project and Um, yes, I started last year university and then fair probably for five or six years

Like I was sort of posting a few videos and sort of it was a slow start with the business and I wasn’t Putting heaps of time into it. I was sort of coaching a squad along alongside it and um, but all like all for me like Since I was 18. I just wanted to be able to Surf when it’s good. I want to be able to swim. I wanted like just be able to sort of do my own thing um, because I I don’t like getting told what to do. So that was like a big motivator for me and um And so like I started effortless mean and was that like had all this free time? And so I ended up surfing more than I probably should have and didn’t get a lot whole lot done But then like just before Um, we’re planning to have a kid my wife said you better you better make something of this because I’m not going to be working soon. You know, you need to actually do something with this business Um, and so that kind of gave me the kick up the ass that I needed and then you know got serious about it

And um, I’m glad I did because it’s like It’s just been so so much better since then like we run a lot of clinics I don’t know if I start maybe like I had just started the podcast then but like all this stuff Came together and it’s like I just I’m so thankful that she With that fire up my ass and um, and that is something that I enjoy doing as well So still able to surf I still get to swim and I get to coach as well And it’s just like yeah, it’s a good combination for me and um, you know I remember being in my last year of uni and when I told I don’t know if it was the Zeta like some of the people in the class So it was like the teacher of the class sort of told them what I was doing I could tell they’re like, okay, like that’s great business idea But like I look back now and I don’t know if there’s any of the businesses that started at university that are still going Um, and yeah, like I’m just glad I didn’t sort of listen to what what their thoughts were on it

So, um, yeah, it’s just like it’s a good motivator to when people don’t think that you can do it and when people yeah Yeah, man. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve read the alchemist. I mean, it’s one of my one of my favorite books

That I just sort of go go back to every now and then but there’s a great There’s a great quote that I I’m not gonna quote it correctly, but it essentially says um Commit to following your dream and the universe will conspire to help you along the way and uh

I mean, it’s just that I mean, there’s almost no there’s no like evidence to back it up Maybe you take a crazy risk. It’s gonna work out. It seems what it’s implying but Somehow it happens that way in a lot of cases, you know, it’s just like I quit my job and then all of a sudden Lionel Sanders, you know, it’s like Come that’s right, right? Like what are the like? What are the odds? What are the odds? Um, it’s sort of like really kick you can’t like kickstart a Triathlon slash youtube career Any better way than that like literally nobody in the world

So just yeah

Yeah, man Yeah, that’s awesome. Oh, it’s yeah I when I look back at all that like it’s just one thing leads to to another and you couldn’t have You couldn’t have planned it that you couldn’t have predicted it But as long as you just sort of keep on the path Things seem to work out and and I’ll look back at I look back at some of the goals I set myself like five six seven years ago and like Pretty much all of them have have happened and it’s like wow, okay It didn’t take a lot longer than I thought but it’s like like it’s all just sort of Planned out not exactly how I thought it was going to happen. But like the end end results there So it’s really cool when when that happens So, yeah, I think that stuff is is great. Well, um, we’ve been going for a while here I so I appreciate the the time jumping on the podcast and Yeah, man Yeah, looking forward to watching your journey over the next couple of years and um, no that will be in touch again

Absolutely. I’ll uh slide into the instagram dm if I need uh Need more drills or uh Some video analysis Yeah, absolutely feel feel free to and good luck for the races this weekend and then enjoy a little bit of downtime after that with with Christmas and a bit of off-season. So, um, yeah, I appreciate you being on the podcast I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Yeah. No, thanks for having me on and uh, Yeah, no, it’s been awesome. It’s uh Great. It’s crazy to just have the the best swimming channel on on youtube just Ask, you know discover me yesterday and I’m on the pod the next day. It’s Yeah

Coming together, it’s uh, yeah, that’s that’s awesome. We’ll uh Yeah, yeah, I’ve I appreciate Ari and that we’ll talk soon. Of course, man. I look forward to uh 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 Starting From Scratch with Ari Klau appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is David Tilbury-Davis. You might know him, you might not. He is the former coach of Lionel Sanders, he coaches a number of professional triathletes, he is one of the most highly successful, highly experienced triathlon coaches out there at the moment. He has been coaching for the last 26 years, he has worked with Olympic athletes, Commonwealth Games athletes, and a lot of age-group and professional triathletes. Enjoy.

04:54 Coaching Long-Term Athletes

08:26 Neurological Fatigue

13:42 Descending Set

19:30 Testing Overall Improvement

24:01 Resilience

29:25 Developing Technique

39:39 Openwater Swimming

41:15 Developing Openwater Swimming Skills

43:14 Safety

51:16 Risk Assessment Instincts

http://www.tilburydavis.com/

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Welcome to episode number 210 of the effortless swimming podcast my guest today is triathlon coach David Tilbury Davis Now you might know him you may not he’s former coach of Lionel Sanders He coaches a number of professional triathletes and he’s one of the most highly successful and highly experienced Triathlon coaches out there at the moment now. He’s been coaching for the last 26 years He’s worked with Olympic athletes Commonwealth games athletes And as I mentioned earlier a lot of professional and age group athletes alike now I had a great chat with David. I learned a lot from the podcast He’s got it a wealth of knowledge and he shares a number of things that That I took away a really good way to help you get comfortable holding a faster stroke rate He also shares a set that a six by 100 set that can test your Contest your resiliency in the water to see where you’re at and how you might go across a nine man distance swim

we also talk about External versus internal cues so external being Rather than thinking I need to get my elbow high He gives you a way that you can approach that and have better success by using an external cue So this was a great podcast. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. So let’s get stuck into it 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 Okay, David, welcome to the podcast Pleasure to be here So you’ve just got back from a little bit of a holiday. Do you take a break from? Coaching or you’re still coaching when you go away or is it more of just a bit of a reset for you as a as a coach And just taking a break from the the daily activities No, I definitely try, you know to take a break and You know make sure all my athletes are all squared away and happy and

Have enough common sense to you know, be autonomous with their decision-making whilst I’m away and Yeah, try to unplug in this day and age So what it wasn’t too bad. I had two athletes racing whilst I was away one in South Africa and one in Cozumel. So there was the odd phone call And the odd checking of the Ironman update page but otherwise it was phone got left in the apartment and

With that I guess having athletes Being able to take responsibility for their own training and not relying on you too much What’s the balance for you? Do you have athletes who are quite dependent on you and they want to chat regularly and Some that are happy to leave it for a week. Where’s that sort of balance for you and how much Instruction and education do you like to provide on on what they should be able to do on their own? I

Try to I try to make sure Sort of the level of Autonomy and an understanding of what they need to do, you know matches Their expectations, you know, I’ve got athletes that are quite early on in their sort of professional career And so maybe Also generationally, you know, I’m closer to 50 some of these athletes might be like mid-20s As another example, maybe female a different culture. They’re American. So as a coach I have to I have to be empathetic to those different cultural and generational

Dynamics and so with this particular athlete, you know, I make sure they understand You know, which direction are sensible to go with their decision-making

So they don’t feel that they’re just sort of left out, you know left out On their own whilst I’m away and then I’ve got other athletes that have been at this game, you know a long time and You know, I they just they they’re not even fussed about speaking to me for a week They’re happy to just crack on and they know, you know, when to call an audible, you know, maybe when

Got one athlete quite talented age group who’s got two young kids And one of them has decided that because they’re Beginning to learn about their vocal cords that having a little sing song of three to five a.m. In the morning is super cool Not so cool for mum and dad, but you know little lad, you know, it’s super fun Just to test his vocal cords out for two hours at three a.m So when that sort of thing happens, you know, he knows, you know, just You know, take a rain check on any intensity and just be smart about it

Yeah, just gonna dig yourself into a hole otherwise answer if you push through a couple of sleepless nights

It’s I found a similar thing working with the athlete star coach in there in their swim stroke is early on typically the more Higher intensity of more regular contact They’re asking a lot more questions and then I think over time they start to take on some of that knowledge that you’ve hopefully being able to win part and then it’s that it’s a you know less often that they they need you and when I’ve got a business coach and he’s helped me for the last 10 years and I I almost know the answer that he’s gonna give me any time I ask him a question It’s good to have him there. It’s about ideas off of but I’ve been with him long enough to You know, know what he’s going to say. Have you found something similar with the the long-term athletes you’ve had? I Wouldn’t say explicitly

You know, I think I’m always tried to in trying to evolve my knowledge bank So, you know one of my professional athletes a couple of years ago was talking to you about how he’d spoken to another pro He was you know saying should you know maybe work with me and one of the things he said was you know one of the things of working with David is even though, you know Certain developmental aspects may have worked for the last 12 months. Don’t assume that you’re just gonna like repeat the same recipe the next 12 months and so

It’s not quite as as simple as that but I do always feel that you know My job is to to certainly empower my athletes, you know with more knowledge more intuition more awareness and Hopefully at some point, you know, I I make myself redundant now, you know That’s in a notional sense because ultimately there’s many professional athletes that are like so experienced that They don’t need a coach to write training sessions per se But they just need a coach to write training sessions because they don’t want to write training sessions They want to just do the training sessions and focus on recovery. So, you know, that’s where you know with the very pointy end athletes I use the example that, you know, it’s not like working with amateur athletes where in terms of performance gains, you know You’re you’re looking at you’re looking for for 20 needles in one haystack, you know with an elite athlete You’re looking for one needle in 20 haystacks. So it becomes more a case of saying to them, you know, okay

What is it that you feel? or you perceive is just missing From your sort of arsenal of performance, you know, what aspect of racing? Do you feel is just not quite where it should be? and then my job is then to go away and Problem solve that find a solution to it contextualize it in the sense of psychology, physiology, neurology And then come back to them and say right, okay This is maybe a subtle shift in how we should do things that’s going to address that Developmental need it’s not a case of coming in with a sort of an approach of okay I you know, I coach people with a polarized approach. So, you know, there’s the worksheet get on with it and

Maybe you’ll be successful. It’s not quite as cut, you know, it’s definitely not that case

Any examples come to mind of athletes where you’ve gone away and thought about it and Looked into what is it that they’re missing and then you’ve been able to find that that needle in a haystack

Yeah, I mean definitely As many as multiple instances over the years You know things like Working more on actually holding an aerodynamic position Working on balance

And bike handling skills by riding on rollers

Working on different ranges of cadence and force production to sort of create the ability to cope with Significant changes in sort of force production, you know over the course of a race Looking at ways of assessing neurological fatigue in in athletes who are hyper sensitive to Neurological fatigue and and trying to monitor that You know, some some athletes, you know, I’ve had two athletes

Similar performance capabilities male pros similar talent sort of similar build

One individual hyper sensitive to neurological fatigue And the other individual just a blunt hammer just needs to do You know a massive amount of of of work to stimulate their parasympathetic system leading into a race whereas the other individual needs to do very little work and lots of super easy volume to stimulate their parasympathetic system And ensure that their taper goes well, and that’s where it gets really interesting because I think in this day and age

With so many coaches and businesses are wrapped up in, you know, metrics and monitoring load. And and unfortunately, you know, a human being is a is a dynamic complex system. And so you have to understand it from a In this day and age from a from a bio psychosocial perspective, you know, somebody may have maybe under a lot of emotional stress because they bought a house and they have a mortgage and there’s just an underlying like

Just really anxious, you know, and they might not so verbalize that. And sometimes you need to work on your people skills and communication skills to get your head around that. And there are others that are just

Just compartmentalize that in the light of now just going to just crack on

And so, you know, there’s there’s a complexity that that can’t really be simplified. And I still can’t don’t think it can be simplified fully by You know, using, you know, AI or relying on certain metrics things like Things like this day and age are things like HRV things like neuromuscular fatigue and counter movement jumps things like training stress scores. You know, to me, they’re all They’re all like a compass, you know, they point north or they point south. They’re not GPS coordinates. So this is exactly where you’re at. And so as a coach, I think there’s still a huge reliance on being able to To sort of, you know, excuse my language, be a bullshit filter for a lot of these metrics. But there’s also a need to be able to look at some of them and say, okay, you know, these things are indicative of x or they’re indicative of y But first and foremost, it comes down to that communication and that buying with the athlete. No, are they talking openly and honestly to you about how they’re feeling what’s going on

And are they well calibrated with that? Some people aren’t And that’s another hurdle. So the nice thing with the swim, you know, your, your Field being the swim is that I think for triathletes the swim is like the canary in the coal mine

And by that, yeah, definitely by that, it’s an old English saying of, you know, they down the coal mines they used to take a canary in a cage and And then if the noxious gases that would suffocate the miners Started to that you can’t smell that, you know, would start to sort of permeate the air the canary would die and then the miners will go, God, we’ve got to get out of the mine. So, you know, that’s the canary in the coal mine but my point there is that the swim is It’s like the early warning system of, of sort of neurological fatigue and general stress. So when you start to see a decay in quality of swimming or capacity to change pace. That’s very quickly an easy way of gauging the sort of holistic stress or the sort of the allostatic load that the athletes under Interesting. So is that, you know, race or in training or both where you’d That’s like almost, that’s like almost every session. Something, you know, something, you know, I’ve been around a lot of swim coaches over the years and

I wouldn’t say I’m set on one approach. I’ve always tried to to pick out what I think are, you know, useful aspects of many different techniques, because I don’t think there is a panacea but one interesting thing

That one coach

I work with taught me was was using like a descending set within a warm up or within a prep set

And just saying to an athlete, okay, I want you to do four by 100 or four by 50 and I want you to sort of go 60, 70, 80, 90% effort And, you know, those times should be a nice decent and there should be, you know, a nice sort of time gap between each of those those times, you know, if you start to see a lack of descending or a flattening of that descent That’s, you know, that’s a prompt for more questions. And that’s, you know, that’s, you know, a test within a workout or a workout that’s a test But that that’s something that I’ve always tried to now incorporate when I’m writing to him sessions for athletes is say okay, pretty much most days that you swim, you know, you’re going to do your warm up And then you’ll do a prep set and within that prep set you’ll do this four by 100 And we’ll just, you know, see what the times are doing and then we just keep an eye on that week, you know, week on week month on month

That’s good. I saw one of the sets that there was something similar that you’d given Simon her and who’s been on this podcast that pro triathlete that you’re coaching And I saw a couple of those descending time or, you know, building effort sets and I think they’re I’m a big fan of them. It’s something that I’ll do if I’m writing workouts like there’s a squad down here in Melbourne that I sort of write programs for three times a week and I swim with them And a lot of times we’re doing some of these descending efforts and it’s it’s such a good indicator of someone’s It’s interesting you say it’s an indicator of like where they’re at essentially in terms of maybe training stress and other things going on And I’ve never thought of it much that way, but I quite quite like that take on it. And I also I just I really like to do those sets just to give people the skills to be able to change gears and have more than just one speed because I’m working with mostly age groupers

People who probably haven’t swam for more than two, three years primarily and it’s it’s a skill that they just don’t have going into the sport and And with the guys that you’re working with it’s they’re really at the pointy end of the field and I mean most of them they’re going to be able to do that stuff but How what are you looking at that four by 100 set across several months and you’re seeing ideally seeing an increase in just in the speeds that they’re going across that several month period and using that as an indicator as as to where they’re at with their swimming Yes Yeah, and it’s and it but there’s a there’s a but

It’s a bit like in cycling the people go on about You know doing a 20 minute test and then taking a very simplistic approaches, you know take 95% of that and that’s your threshold You don’t need to get into semantic debate about definitions of threshold but that’s a really sort of simple cyclists approach to do a 20 minute test now as a as a coach yeah of course I just I could write a training program that makes somebody truly awesome at 20 minute tests but if they’re racing an Ironman they’re going to suck in that race if they never ride longer than two hours So so my point there is that this this four by 100 it’s it’s very useful it’s very indicative you can you can track it as a trend to look at increasing performance but you still need to have a Another way of understanding okay their their actual sort of fitness swim fitness is improving but really what you care about in long distance racing is resilience or like in a muscular endurance and so you need to get a look at that another way is there another approach that you do with a work out or do you just do a race and go

Okay great well my program or my swim my approach to swim coaching is X and Y and Z in this instance with this athlete and they do this race and their swim got better than it was six months ago and when I say better I mean as a percentage of the fastest swimmers at that race because that’s the only way you can account conditions so the way that I would track performance with professional athletes is I’d look at their swim as a percentage of the fastest swimmer in their in their gender because generally speaking somebody like that you’ve had in the pool somebody like Josh hamburger Josh’s swim performance doesn’t really change much you know he’s right at the point he and then he’s pretty consistent so the variance is pretty tight so you just know that if an athlete’s racing Josh and you know six months ago they were 107% of Josh’s time and now they’re 104% then my swim programs working. Yeah that’s and is that how you’d normally approach it to see their overall improvement or is there a swim set or test that you’ll have them do on a somewhat regular basis.

I mean that that’s one way the other way is again coming back to that four by 100. There’s a couple of swim approaches I take a nice one that that I learned from can Cameron die who was a top professional triathlete some years ago. He and a really really good swimmer he particularly likes using a test where you do six by 100 as fast as you can physically go for the six by 100 with a five second recovery. And he said that in his experience that if somebody is sort of neurologically resilient that they can hold their stroke together on the high load, then you should literally see the splits for those hundreds be plus or minus one second. If you see them, sort of like that fifth or sixth one like drop from like a 112 to like a 115, then they are lacking, you know, resilience endurance, you know the capacity to hold their stroke together. And that’s a nice little test, particularly long, you know and then you know you’ve got other swim sessions you can do or again you could look at a classic.

A classic Paul Newsom, you know swim smooth is a is a red mist. You know it’s basically 10 by 400 so you go five five four three two one on the four hundreds and. And again you’re looking for that to improve over a period of time. You’re looking for a good decent, you know from easy aerobic down to, you know threshold, and you’re looking for just consistent descends and pacing. Other approaches you can take are being a little bit more. What’s the word. You know, you’re looking at the athlete a bit more sort of introspection and saying right what I want you to do is I want you to do what I call broke, like a broken 4k or a broken 3k. You say right I want you to swim this broken 3k. You perceive to be your race effort for your given race, and you can break that 3k up as much as you like into hundreds 50s 200s 300s 400s 1k whatever it doesn’t make you can mix and match I don’t care. And I don’t care about the recovery, either you can take short amount or large amount or whatever works for you, as long as you hit that pace.

So, for some athletes that that perceived race effort is always going to be, it always should be quicker when they’re doing a swim session than the actual race effort, because in the race you know you try athletes they’ve still got a bike they’ve still got to run you know it’s competition anxiety. So it might be in this instance that somebody does a broken 3k and they’re trying to hold 112 and they go sort of, you know, couple of 400s couple of 300s couple of 200s some 50s. And they’re always hitting that 112 pace. You know and you can you can play around with the intensity on that you can say okay actually I want you to do that work out, but I want you to do that work out and actually swim it as fast as you would swim a 3k time trial. And again you know you’re then going to start to get an indication of, you know resilience and muscular endurance. So in that instance because again they might pick a time. So let’s say this athlete that was swimming 112 for a for an Ironman, you know they might pick 110.

And then suddenly it actually, you know they do a couple of 400s couple of 300s and then it starts to kind of go to 111s on the 200s and then they drop to 50s and then, you know they’re just able to hold those 35s. And that, you know tells you, yeah probably you just haven’t quite got enough resilience in this room. I like how you use the word resilience because it describes what you can need towards the end of a longer swim because you do see people stroke break down they can’t keep the intensity. And that’s when they can drop off several seconds towards the per 100 towards the end of a of a race, particularly over that Ironman distance. How do you typically go about teaching someone that or training someone who doesn’t come from a swimming background, and they come to you as an athlete is it with sets like that, or just with the training sets that you’re giving them and you’re trying to educate them on what you’re looking to develop

within their swimming because I know, I mean I found it I’ve done a season of triathlon I did one Olympic one half one full, and I never, I was never able to sustain intensity on the bike like I just I didn’t have spent enough time on it. And I was, I was just sort of flatline the whole time running I can push it I’ve done that for a while swimming was fine, but the bike I just I haven’t spent the hours on it and I couldn’t do it so what’s your experience in teaching people that in the swim league. Um, I know I limited to the to the swim for sure and it’s partly through the you know the sessions like the ones I described it might also be with introducing some swim toys for certain stimulus responses that are trying to mimic the kind of situations you find in open water. But it centers around swim sessions like that, because I think that’s the only way you can get them to really reflect on how I feel.

And the reason I think it’s important to take this kind of approach is because you know you you talk to any good swim coach and they say okay, give me an athlete you want to make them a fast swimmer I’m going to make them swim. 50 to 60k a week. Let’s let’s put aside whether they are experienced as a swimmer but you know it’s like the reality is if, if you want to train as a swimmer and develop yourself aerobically. So develop your physiology as a swimmer, you need to be swimming north of 50k doesn’t matter what distance you’re right, you’re going to be swimming north of 50k a week. Now clearly age group triathletes even professional triathletes, they just can’t swim that amount is it’s impossible for them to swim that amount and be able to do their other training or have a normal life so. So then you have to step back and say okay, the restriction in this athletes ability to perform is not cardiovascular.

You sense doing training, which is centered around cardiovascular development. You have to accept that there is a cardiovascular stimulus that comes from doing the swim training, but it is not the primary driver primary driver is feel for the water and capacity to maintain technique under load. 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 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.

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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 used 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. And then that is a subtly different approach. Yeah that’s so true. And in terms of developing technique and some of that filth the water is and you mentioned earlier that there’s no panacea of swim strike and obviously of the same opinion that there’s different strikes of different folks. Are there a couple of things that you will have your athletes focus on with the swim or how do you sort of work that individually with each of the athletes you’ve got.

So I’m going to I’m going to take a step back and go to some basic physiology. When we when we look at how muscles work you muscles produce force and at different contraction rates and the amount of force they can produce is proportional to the velocity of contraction. That’s sort of AV Hills original force velocity curve. Now, every human being depending on their muscle morphology and biology so they’re fiber typing mitochondrial density muscle mass, you know, sheer size of them in terms of how much drag gets created. They, they have a natural tendency or a natural curve that’s a reflection of that on of their underlying musculature. So you might have somebody that swims with a very high stroke rate. And that stroke rate will be consistently high or higher as they get faster in the water, or as they’re changing speed and getting quicker in the water and likewise you might have somebody that swims at a very low cadence.

And, you know, slowly increases their cadence as they’re swimming at faster speeds. With those two individuals you have to take very different approaches because really all that you’re trying to do is take that sort of exponential curve that’s that that’s the force velocity curve, and you’re literally trying to move it sort of a little bit to the right and a little bit up. And so with that individual that swims at a really slow cadence. What you wouldn’t do is say, Okay, well, when we look at the majority of open water swimmers, they all swim at 90 strokes per minute. So I’m going to make you practice something at 90 strokes per minute when that person is natural physiology is that they only swim at like 72. That’s like going to the gym and saying, I can bench press 100 kilos for five reps, and I want to improve that. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to try and bench press two reps at 200 kilos.

Stupid, can’t do that. I mean, you could try. So, so in, so in this instance, you know, it’s, it’s stimulus, I would take an approach of stimulation response. So with somebody that swims at low accadences, I would, I’ve used the example and again, this is a great approach that I learned from Justin Slater aqua bears in Tucson, who’s very much about, you know, improving feel for the water and he said, you need to like, completely over stimulate them. So, so what we might do is a bunch of fifties and I would say, Okay, Brinton, you swim, typically at 72 strokes a minute. So you’re going to get a tempo trainer. You’re going to set it to 100 strokes a minute, and you’re going to do for fifties at 100 strokes a minute, and I do not care how crap your stroke is, how much you have to shorten it. How much you rush the recovery. How much you look like garbage in the water. I do not care what you do as long as you spin your arms at 100 strokes a minute.

And you do a couple of fifties like that. And it’s infuriating and maddening. And then you set the tempo trainer to 75. And you go, Right, now you’re going to do four by 100 at 75 and moderately hard. And, you know, and then you’ll cycle through that set, like several times, you know, 100 back to 75, 100 back to 75, when your natural tendency would be to swim at 72. So then 75 suddenly starts to feel like, Oh, this is really quiet relaxed. And that’s like a stimulus approach and response approach. You know, much the same way that, you know, correcting some stroke techniques require you to sort of over stimulate somebody in order to get them to kind of process in their head what’s going on like somebody that, that, you know, over extends at the front of the stroke you say, Okay, you know, this is a Paul Newsom one is, you know, put some swim paddles on and swim down the pool. And when you get hoppy down the pool, I want you literally to point your fingers at sky.

And they will literally come to a standstill. And then say, right, carry on swimming now. So now you know what you’re doing when you’re overextending. That’s the sensation. That’s what you’re physically doing. So you’re using sort of neurology to kind of train their brain. And you’re doing it in a way that is centered around external cues, not internal cues. This is really important because there’s been a whole bunch of work done on internal versus external queuing. And psychologically, if you say to somebody, you know, say, you know, Brenton, you know, you’re dropping your elbow when you extend at the front. So I want you to just keep your elbow a little bit higher. All that your brain will do is think about your elbow, nothing else. But from a motor control perspective, what we really want to have happen is we want you to actually get into a position where your elbow is high. So if what I said to you was Brenton, I want you to go down the pool.

And I want you to swim and every time you take a stroke I want you to think about basically reaching over a keg of beer. So your brain will then think about all the movement patterns that go into you visualizing or perceiving that you’re reaching over a keg. And that’s very, and so, you know, you want to always be trying to use these external cues or external sort of stimuli that can help the athlete develop their stroke. And yeah, that’s kind of the way that I’d come at it. And that’s that’s terrific. I really love the to start saying with the stroke rate. So that’s a great approach. And it’s like you’re talking about overstimulation like in our clinics, we do a couple of contrast drills to get people to exaggerate the things that we’re trying to avoid so that when they get them right, they really notice the difference in in drag or propulsion. And then they can self coach and they know whether or not they’re doing those things because they’ve got that awareness about it.

So that that stroke rate one’s really good. And it’s funny you say that because I remember a couple years back when I finally got myself some tempo trainers. I went down to MSAC here in Melbourne and I did a I think I did four fifties at might have been 90 strokes a minute and it was incredibly hard. I was gassed afterwards. But then it’s exactly that like you then a stroke rate of 75 feels like it’s not that much. And so it’s a great approach because I know it’s an issue for for a lot of swimmers and I actually had a guy recently who came to a clinic and his coach has been getting him to try and like rate up to around 90 strokes a minute. But he’s he’s he can’t do that. He can’t he can’t swim at that at that cadence. Well, and I think at best he might be a high 70s sort of swimmer. So he’s just like I’m getting so tired doing doing this. So it’s yeah, it’s it’s also it’s also it’s also length of levers, it’s basic physics.

You know, if you’ve got somebody that’s quite tall with long arms, you know, long levers, then you know when they’re grabbing the water. Let’s say, you know, let’s say 80 centimeters below their shoulder at mid stroke. Don’t get hard on me about stroke technique about I’m just using that as a as a landmark. You know, if there’s if they’re creating a lot of force at that point 80 centimeters deep in the water, you know, the load at the shoulder joint is far more than somebody that is anatomically shorter with shorter limbs where they’re only like 55 centimeters deep. Now the stroke technique may look identical, but the basic physics of force production are wildly different. And so, you know, that’s where coming back to that example of contrast and stroke technique if you’ve got somebody that swims at a really high stroke rate. You know, maybe they’re not actually grabbing enough water. So that’s where I’d resort to like drag tools like, you know, parachutes and foam donuts and things like that.

To actually really force them to think about holding the water. I wouldn’t use paddles. And now, you know, it’s a contentious one, but I’m pretty anti paddles, because I think the biggest problem that most athletes have is a lack of awareness of catch and feel for the water. So why would you put something on your hand, which completely destroys any perception of tactility that you have on your stroke. Doesn’t make any sense to me, especially because when you swim in an open water race, whether it’s a triathlon open water race, and you’re swimming on somebody’s feet. That water that you’re grabbing is heavily aerated. So it’s not as dense as pool water. So if you’re constantly doing lots of swimming with paddles in a pool, and then you go and swim open water and you always wonder, why don’t I massively underperforming? It’s because you have no feel for the water and you’re doing lots of swimming with paddles, and then you’re going in a race and swimming in water, which requires a lot of awareness of your catch.

Yeah. Then with when people swim in a squad, I see a lot of them push off two or three seconds on someone’s feet. What’s your, have you got a preference for that? Like, do you find that beneficial just getting used to swimming in someone’s drag and having that water aerated a bit? Do you want them to swim on their own with clean water or a mix of both? Yeah, it’s context. If you’ve got somebody that has poor open water swim skills relative to their pool swimming, and there’s a disconnect, and you say, right, I want you to swim on the person in front’s feet. And you tell them to, if they’re in a squad, you say, please do make sure you explain to that person that you’re going to do that and why you’re doing it. But likewise, if you’ve got somebody that just handles like rough water really easily, that’s something I’ve always found personally is, you know, I’m not a great swimmer, but just open water, my capacity to change my stroke technique is fairly good.

So I never really saw any decay in my ability, open water versus the pool. In fact, I was actually a better open water swimmer. I was a pool swimmer. But a lot of athletes are the other way around. So, you know, with somebody that’s actually quite good at open water swimming and coping with current and chop and athletes around them, then, you know, I’d always want them going five seconds behind the person in front. Yeah, gotcha. And in terms of developing those open water skills, are you giving many athletes open water swims in the lead up to some races, or is it a lot of the athletes that you coach, you know, they’ve got that experience and it’s like, yeah, you obviously want to go open water and practice that. But is it something that you will schedule into your programming? I mean, there’s a logistical aspect to it. Of course, I’ve got one athlete I coach who raced in South Africa this weekend, but he’s Swedish and he lives in Stockholm. You can’t really open water swim leading into a race at the moment in Stockholm.

I mean, you can, you know, to be fair, you know, there’s lots of people that like cold water swimming in Finland. I’ve tried it. Two degrees centigrade water is not fun. Even for a couple of minutes, even when you’ve got God knows how much wetsuit gear on and neoprene and cold weather gear. Yeah, I mean all seriousness. For somebody that, you know, athletes that I coach in Australia, if they are close to the beach, I definitely see value in maintaining an open water swim each week as a triathlete to develop, you know, skills and awareness. And I would just get them playing around with working on their beach starts working on their exits working on, you know, swimming across the current or through the shop. Rather than go, you know, you’re going to do intervals of this, this distance and this intensity. Now I would just probably focus more on skills or if you’re swimming with a friend from a safety perspective, you know,

bump each other around swim on each other’s feet, you know, roll over their legs, practice stuff like that. So you just become more adept at coping with those scenarios. I was watching the Ironman South Africa swim that earlier today, because I saw a little bit of footage from it and I thought that, yeah, it looked like a reasonably rust swim, particularly the the entry and the exit. Have you seen any footage of that or you’ve been offline for the last few weeks? I saw a few clips. I know it’s been a discussion point, you know, my, the athlete that I coached, he got third overall, he was first off the bike and he said, you know, there was definitely a very significant amount of swell and in the shop. And could the professional athletes have managed to swim 3,800? Maybe they could. And maybe they should be able to. Especially if you Google Perron Porth surf triathlon in Wales, then you’ll see what real chop looks like.

The safety is the race organizer and the race director has to make a safety decision. And, and if, and if they’re not comfortable that they can logistically manage the safety of athletes, then they, you know, they have to shorten the swim. And, and, and that’s, you know, they do is what it is. It’s clear water one year in Florida and the swim was originally meant to go on the outside of the peninsula there and the day before the race I was swimming with one of the pros that I was working with at the time. And I literally remember we, we got into the water and we started swimming and we were basically swimming uphill and I watched I should go over the top of the wave and disappear down the other side and, and, and, you know, I kind of carried on swimming and we got out after a while and we were like, yeah, that was, that was a little crazy. And then the next day, you know, they moved the swim to the other side of the peninsula where it was a lot more sheltered than they changed the starting approach of the race.

Race organizers have to do this, you know, they’ve still got to manage the safety of people it’s not. It’s not a case of, well, it’s not an iron man if you didn’t swim the full distance it’s just, you know, that’s racing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I’ve experienced that when we’re even with our camps overseas in Thailand, for example, you know, we’ve had to change beaches and all of that because it’s, and, and, and a lot of the students, particularly the good students they’re like, can you just let us go out and, you know, all of that but as the, as the person running the camp and as the race directors have to you’ve, you’ve got to keep that in the back of you’ve got to keep the safety in mind because it’s, it’s not a good thing if, if anything goes wrong. So yeah, I completely get it. And they also think as well when, when somebody’s not experienced a situation where they are no longer in control of their own safety in the water, unless you’ve experienced a situation like that.

It’s very easy to be flipping like, ah, you know, they should all just man up and get on with it. You know, like, no, I mean, I, I, I coached him. I was coaching in Brazil for a couple of months some years ago. And we were swimming from this particular beach and there was a group of us triathletes and there was, you know, some swimmers that were also getting in the water and there was a, I would say, middle aged couple that were getting in the water and they had fins and big ass paddles on. And I kind of noticed and was like, oh, interesting. And so we all start swimming and, you know, one of the guys says, you know, we’re going to swim around the edge of that peninsula there and into the next bay and then we’ll swim back. But you know, remember there’s a bit of a current. And so we’re swimming and I’m leading the group of us. And as we get close and close to this peninsula, I can feel there’s like a current that’s just like compressing and getting faster and faster and just pushing us like into

towards the rocks on the very pointy end of that peninsula. And it got to a point where I was literally full out sprinting and going nowhere. And I was like, yeah, this is daft. Now I know why they were wearing flippers and paddles. And then we just, you know, we all just sort of, you know, sat out, stopped swimming and literally within two seconds, you’re 50 meters back towards the beach that we swam from. And, you know, unless you’ve been in a situation like that, it’s very easy to look at, you know, relatively calm water that might actually have, you know, as you Australians know, you know, you get a get water that looks doesn’t look that bad, but there might be a really strong rip. You did not want to be in that. Yeah, it’s so deceptive, isn’t it? Yeah, totally. I remember going to, I was in Raglan in New Zealand and on a surf trip there. And I got out of the water after a surf. It wasn’t even very big. And this guy was, he was sort of five meters wide of where everyone else was paddling back out.

And he got caught in this rip and he paddled for half an hour, didn’t go anywhere, and trying to get across and trying to get back in and then eventually got tired, stopped paddling, and pretty quickly got taken out to sea. And within 15 minutes, couldn’t see him anymore. And so someone up in the car park had called the like emergency services and then half an hour later a guy comes on a jet ski and comes into shore and says, where’s the guy? He’s been gone for about half an hour or 45 minutes. So just like going out until you find him eventually came back with him. But yeah, you’ve got, yeah, you’ve got no, no chance of getting back in when it’s those conditions and it didn’t look that it wasn’t didn’t look dangerous at all. No, I mean, I think, I think, you know, sitting down with, you know, sitting down with a textbook, you know, and maybe it’s something that happens with, you know, the younger generation in Australia but, you know, even for professional

athletes, you know, just taking a moment to sit down with a book and learn about how to read a rip and, you know, understanding some of that stuff can actually be hugely beneficial from a racing perspective, you know, just to be aware of how to read current and chop. And it’s, ironically, it’s something that Richard Varga and one of the top, the top ITU swimmer has talked about is, you know, he is so in tune with his swim stroke that he’ll go to a race venue and he’ll look at the conditions that, you know, in the days leading up to the race, and he’ll pay attention to anything and everything and then he’ll adapt his stroke in the race, depending on what’s going on, you know, he’ll change his cadence, he’ll strain changes recovery, you know, his timing, you know, all those sorts of things, you know, and that’s what they do at the very point he end, whereas most of us is just survive. Yeah, yeah, I’ve had a surf Ironman athlete.

So, like the, it’s like a swim board and and paddle over here in Australia. It’s a big thing and I had a guy Matt Bevilacca on the podcast and he’s he said the biggest surf he’s been out in competition wise was 10 foot surf. And like these guys are just the very best at those sort of conditions and, you know, to keep cool out there. You don’t just jump straight into it’s about just progressively building your confidence, building your experience and then going about it that way and for me when I started to swim open water came from a pool swimming background. It took me about three years to get any good at it because I had a pool based stroke. I didn’t know how to site didn’t know how to draft and it took me a while to learn it and that came from swimming since I was four years old. So it’s something that you just need to get in there and have that get that experience because I kind of equate it to like, you know, mountain bike riding compared to riding on the road like you.

It’s a different sort of handling skill that that it’s required that it’s is required and yeah you just got to you can’t learn that that part of it from a book can you. No you can and you know I would say you know a better analogy is almost like looking at like rock climbing. And you know you talk to top rock climbers and you see some of things that they do and you know that that’s insane you know how could anybody do that but actually like the most. skilled rock climbers are you know have developed like natural sort of risk assessment instincts. Like over many, many years, you know there’s the most famous is Alex Honold and you know his free his climb free solo of El Capitan and everybody says that’s as a as a feat of human endurance that’s the greatest thing that anybody’s probably ever done. And you know there’s some psychological aspect to why he’s able to do it because his amygdala just doesn’t is doesn’t get particularly stimulated.

They don’t know why he was born that way or but but but he’s but he still talks about, you know he’s never doing anything in that endeavor where he felt he was, you know, out of control or you know, because ultimately, you know, the net result would be death. And that’s the thing is exactly exactly what Matt is saying you have to very slowly build up sort of you know stimulus and response to these types of environments and conditions, rather than and and it can make a huge difference I know from personal experience you know you can make a massive difference, developing your open water skill set such that you can swim on faster feet versus relying on just swim fitness. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I said at the start, we’ll go for about half an hour, we’ve gone for almost on an hour here so I don’t take up your time any further. Really enjoyed chatting with you and you know for me these podcasts I think it’s somewhat selfish because I get to learn a lot from people like yourself who have got a wealth of knowledge and experience in triathlon and swimming so I’ve taken it taken away a lot from this podcast so I appreciate you taking the time to be here.

And I know you’re not a man of sort of social media and all that sort of stuff but your coaching services is Tilbury Davis so if people do want to find out more about you or perhaps get in contact what’s the best way to go about it. Yeah, I mean I’m on, I’m on Instagram as coach Tilbury’s and Tilbury Davis Twitter coach Tilbury’s and my website is Tilbury Davis.com. So, and there’s plenty of information there and you know this I’ve been on a few podcasts and shared a lot of thoughts around, around coaching over the years as things have evolved in my mind. And within the sport as a whole or endurance sports as a whole. Yeah, there’s plenty there. It seems like it’s like it seems like the more the secret weapon of a lot of the, a lot of top triathletes and is it mostly word of mouth how like I guess it spreads and through podcasts and that kind of thing. I mean certainly I’ve I’ve always, I’ve always worked with a small number of athletes globally and I’ve always tended to have athletes approach me through reputation or referral.

And I think that’s generally how it works and you know certainly there’s you know athletes that work through a couple of coaches over a period of years and that’s, you know, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just trying to learn and improve, you know, I’ve coached individuals like Lionel Sanders twice in the last five years. And, you know, at some point you have to accept that maybe, you know, you’re not adding value knowledge wise, or maybe, you know, from a communication perspective, you know you’re not. You’re not adding things of, you know, adapted and changed or moved in such a way that you’re not, you know, ticking all the boxes in creating sufficient buying. And that’s why as a coach I think in any sport, I think the most important thing you can work on is communication. And then after that worry about all the technical knowledge stuff. When you get an athlete to be fully bought in to a process, you know, you’re always going to be having a little bit of an uphill battle, you know, and just hoping that they buy the knowledge when in reality, you know, in any sale industry they say, you know, people buy people they don’t buy knowledge.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. And I think that’s the good thing about podcasts like this, you get to, you get to, you get to see what someone’s really like when you have this long form conversation. So it’s, and I think for me personally with my business, I think a lot of the people have come to camps and clinics, they’ve listened to the podcast and they can decide whether or not the right person to work with. And that’s what I really like about these these podcasts because we can. Yeah, and I don’t think you really have these types of conversations that often just in person like you don’t how often you sit down with your friend chat on one topic. So, yeah, no this is this offer a matter in this, you know, den age of a lot of remote work or with peers, you know, I think, you know, once you get to a certain point and you have a certain amount of knowledge. You shouldn’t be afraid to share that. You shouldn’t be afraid to sit down with a peer and say, hey, you know, what do you think about this? Because wisdom is, you know, accepting that sometimes you’re wrong and changing your perspective and evolving.

You know, that’s, that’s what’s, that’s what’s key. Yeah, and God knows I’ve done that a lot of times over the last 15 years that I’ve coached. But I think it’s all for the better. So yeah, David, I appreciate the time and it’s been great. 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 Lessons From The Top with David Tilbury-Davis appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Phil Clayton. Phil was a professional Ironman, Surf Ironman Competitor from 1992 to 2004. In 2000, he won the World Ironman Championships. He has a lot of experience as a Surf Ironman Coach and as a swim coach. His main thing is helping people get comfortable, get experience to become open water swimmers.

05:06 Swimming Background
06:55 Where Do You Start?
12:48 Swimming In The Ocean
15:23 The Story That You Are Telling Yourself
17:34 “Marine Creatures”
28:38 Breathing Cycle
29:28 Bilaterral Breathing
33:32 Creating A Community

https://www.philclaytonandco.com/

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Effortless Swimming Freestyle Clinic

Welcome to episode number 209 of the Effortless Swing podcast my guest today is none other than Phil Clayton And Phil’s was a professional Ironman surf Ironman competitor from 1992 to 2004 and in 2000 He won the world Ironman championships He’s also got a lot of experience as a surf Ironman coach and as a swim coach So he was head coach at Kara surf Club up on the Gold Coast in 2006 to 2013 and also Coach at Burley Head surf Club from 2018 to 2020 and I had a really good chat with Phil his main thing is helping people Get comfortable get experience become better ocean or open water swimmers and Phil and I met a year or two ago now and Love his philosophy really enjoy his outgoing and vibrant personality And I think he’s a real asset to the swim community particularly those that he Coaches and trains up on the Gold Coast So before we get into the episode just want to go through a little bit of housekeeping stuff

I’ve had a lot going on in the last couple of months since pools have opened So there’s a few new things that we’ve got coming out which I’m really excited about so last week I just finished recording our beginner freestyle course. So if you struggle to swim 400 meters without stopping this is going to be for you So our beginner freestyle course will be available in probably the next week or two and it’s going to take you through the basics like breathing and floating Finding your balance kicking all the way to use me your first 400 continuous without stopping So if you are listening to this and you’re finding things are quite difficult at the moment You can’t do 25 or 50 meters then that’s why I created this course So I might let you know once that’s available and it won’t be too far away The other thing that we’ve got coming up and I’ve mentioned this a number of years ago So probably three three years ago when we first started on it

We have got our swim paddle that that we’ve designed Not too far away from being released so we are going to launch it on Kickstarter in order to sort of start that business and currently we’re just sort of filming some of the Videos for the promotional videos that we’re going to use on Kickstarter and it’s a I’m really excited about this It’s been a long time coming But we’re finally at that stage where we’ve got everything lined up in order to produce the paddle And now we’re just getting ready to Start the Kickstarter. So I’ll be dropping some videos here and there once we start to get some footage of it But this is this is essentially designed to help you improve your catch So obviously that’s the most important part of your stroke for most people and it’s designed to move your hands Through through the catch motion Into the right position to get a good high elbow catch So, um, yeah, it’s a it’s a really nice design

Looks good and feels really comfortable So I can’t wait to uh to launch that that’ll be another probably a few months away But um, we’re getting to the final stages of that now And then the the last thing is our eight week faster freestyle course. You might have heard me mention that before That’s now available as an individual course if you’d like to go through that And that’s designed for people who want to find extra speed In their stroke and become a bit more efficient. So I put this eight week course together to have some structure around Developing each part of the stroke. So essentially each week you’ll focus on a different thing and there’s a suggested warm-up and drills to do to Develop your better breathing or body position whatever it might be for that week And then there’s three workouts a week as well if you’d like to go through those But with this kind of structure, it’s going to help incorporate some of these things into your stroke

So if you’ve ever felt confused by what to focus on and if you’re someone who likes structure Then this is the way to go and it works whether you are training by yourself or swimming with the squad There’s ways that you can incorporate this stuff into either sort of program that you’re doing So that’s enough on what we’ve got coming up I just wanted to let you know because i’m excited about some of these final things that have that have come together And uh, let’s get into the podcast with phil

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 Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast. My guest today is phil clayton. Can I feel you? Thanks Brenton? How are you?

Yeah, good. Thank you. I wanted to get you on the podcast Because we met I don’t know if it was a year ago or two years ago. It goes very quickly, but um, you’re You’re a professional swim coach and you work primarily with people in the ocean and your your background is as a surf iron man athlete very A lot of achievements in in that area and also as a as a surf iron man coach and now a lot of swimming And one of the things that I come across with the athletes that I coach is Transferring that speed from the pool Into the open water is a is a different story sometimes. So I thought you would be a great guest to get on and to talk about How people can go about that. So just for the listeners. What’s um, what’s your background in surf iron man and then swim? Um, that’s quite long I started in woolen gong under rick and ron mckayin. Um, I swam with them for quite a few years I then moved into professional iron man series. Um, the uncle toby’s and the kelogs

And moved to the gold coast and then started training under denis cotchwell. Who was my last swim coach there for most of the years Um, from that I competed as a professional athlete for about 15 years and then moved into the industry of surf coaching I was head coach at karawa surf club and just recently finished as head coach at burley heads surf club From that I realized when uh, when covid started that there was a great market for people that actually wanted to jump out and Try open water swimming When all the pools were shut a really close friend of mine ty dalker runs the australia day ocean australia day runs swim event up here in the gold coast And he had just a little group that was doing Early morning training and we combined and we worked together and it took off like a rocket My business has gone from zero to hero and at the moment we’ve got about six different sections It ranges from teaching people how to conquer their fear about getting in the ocean

How to actually read the ocean then I do um swimming in the creek Then we do swim escapes where we just got back from hamilton island with 30 people where we we swim at different locations And then this monday Coming I start my new adult learn to swim in televised a creek, which is I didn’t realize there’s so many people out there one that are afraid of the ocean Two that want to conquer their fear and jump in it that’s free Have never really been taught how to swim and there’s only brought really pools that are available to teach people the basics So my business is growing. We’re having a great time doing it. We’re learning as we go and it’s a lot of fun

Well, it’s such a we were talking about this a little bit earlier like this It’s very hard to find Someone or somewhere to learn how to swim if you’re an adult like if you’re 40 years old and you think all right I’m going to get into swimming where do you start it’s it’s quite difficult to To find a good place that can can teach you and even teach you the very basics And as as you and I know when you’re working with people who are brand new you get some funny questions One of the questions I got was how do you put on a swim cap? And it’s like it’s inherent knowledge for us But you know, there’s just such basic stuff that I wouldn’t often consider when you’re working with people who have got some experience in the pool So how how have you found it with the with those real beginners like changing perhaps from going from your elite competition To um to back to basics Yeah, it’s challenging It’s very tough because I’ve come from a field of actually dealing with elite and they know everything they’re taught at a very young age

It’s repetitive as a kid from 10 years of age. They swim their whole life So all of a sudden I was dealing with like you say 40 year old adults and we call them free range When they come down people like you said they put their caps on sideways They don’t even have a clue and the goggles are facing upside down the speedo mark in the middle of the goggles or the velary mark It’s upside down. They don’t even know and all it is is basic stuff So I actually keep redefining my sessions more and more and more and I cut back further and further because To me what I think is just absolute common knowledge. It is hilarious the things that people ask, you know The most common one for me. Obviously, we swim in the ocean I do most of my swimming at burley head surf club Out the front or I do it in talabajara creek And I actually get people coming up to me asking me before their first sessions What I’m doing about the sharks how I’m taking care of the sharks

And we’ve got one later that soon as with three shark bands So one on each ankle and one on a wrist and uh, she’s still with us. So they obviously work but For me for me. It’s cutting it back It’s and we’ve got a lady in our group Sonya who she actually identifies the little things to me that mean nothing as gold nuggets And uh, every session I hopefully give out one two or three gold nuggets that they can take away and put it in their toolbox And uh and use it every time they swim

Yeah, it’s um It and often and that’s what I’ve found in the last like six or seven years that I’ve been running clinics The the simplest possible version of it is is the best like we started with a heap of content So I can’t fit everything in and then the more you do it the more you work with pebble You start to whittle it down until what’s really essential and so if they come away with one or two things You know, it’s that they remember it and then they can build upon it the next for me It’s been tough because um as a head coach of a surf club. You’re not only running the kids You’re running the surf club. There’s so much back-end work to do and it’s all about structure and preparation so you’re right you you program you work backwards from the carnivals and With this, you know, I’ll have a four-week program written up for my swimmers Mate it goes out the door when I get down there and it’s and there’s this howling tide coming in

There’s a sand bank halfway through the course So it’s about evolving and learning as you go and you’ve actually got to play with it And then the second part of that is the different abilities. So I don’t judge I I don’t care what level of ability you are I’ll let anyone come along and if you can’t swim well, then I’ll ask you to put fins on I provide paddles for different sessions, but all of a sudden my session that I’ve got organized I have to completely flip because one person’s so far behind I’ve got to incorporate different things so that everyone can keep up and it’s it’s actually an enjoyable session

Yeah, that’s right There’s one thing I found when we started running out camps in Thailand a couple years ago was We started going open water and then the first year that we that we did that or maybe the second year We weren’t prepared for the different levels and the surf and I was like, all right We have to do a better job at at the safety here and And you know, then now we use a use a boat. We’ve got kayaks out there We’ve got the safety sorted because it’s hard. You’ve got a group of pretty quick swimmers. They’re out of heads You’ve got a middle group. Maybe you’ve got two other groups behind it And you can’t just leave them to their own devices You’ve got to have that that support there And I mean you’ve I look say you’ve got quite a few helpers there with you with your like tally creaks Yeah, we do we um, we really promote youth I’m a big fan of safety coming from surf life saving I actually work for surf life saving for some years and help them formulate their shallow water rescue program

Unfortunately, when one of the young kids drowned My job was to go out and find him and I had to coordinate the whole thing and structure the whole program From that it’s paramount for me. So incorporating youth with the surf clubs We actually pay our kids 25 dollars an hour. They love it They get cash on the day and we usually have four in so we work off the ratio of eight to one Depending on our numbers and we follow the guidelines of surf life saving and it’s really comforting And we actually get people come from other swim groups that rock up to have a swim And they say, you know how comforting it is that we’re out the back On the weekend, we actually just swam from burly heads right around a telebudger creek. So it’s a 2k swim We had boys the whole way, but we set out swimming Our water safety out at all the different cans So at every point you had someone that was looking after you taking care of you and guiding you as you went

And for people who are nervous and scared about it, we’re a long way out to sea We’re a good 400 meters off the shore and that really comforts them. So that’s one of our biggest is safety Even when I go away to um, Donald Nyland, you know, I pay for a paid lifeguard So a council lifeguard comes away with me and then another water safety so that we keep that ratio Eight to one and it just makes life so much easier for me. And in regards to that the two people that are water safety One’s a an athlete that was in the neutral growing some years ago and The other one is a professional swimming coach as well So they can actually guide and help when they see that someone’s struggling or they need stroke correction or So it’s all about team too Yeah, absolutely and uh moving into Swimming in the ocean compared to swimming in the pool From your experience and your own experience and working with swimmers in coaching them on that

What are some of those things that you like to teach and focus on when it does come to the open water swimming compared to the pool? Because it’s uh, it’s a different environment out there and you know the triathletes that I coach It’s uh, yeah, you know that they’ve got to get that experience in the open water Else it’s just that they’re not going to be able to compete as well as they um, what if it was in a pool totally I um last year we had the the british triathlon olympic team come out There was about 20 in the squad Before tokyo and they did five weeks here and we based it out at alabajara, but we swam at all different locations One of the biggest things for me was that they had no idea about conditions They didn’t know when a rip was coming in. Um, they didn’t know about currents They would never know how to read the actual tides. Obviously, it’s a little bit different over there in england

But what the first thing I always try and do is teach people how to read an app So when you go into a location, you know what the conditions are going to be like Therefore you can actually start mentally preparing what you’re going to be doing And then before we do a session this morning time myself We stand there and we explain it over and over and over We don’t just do it once we do it three or four or five times during the session And we try to get people to read the conditions so they can use it to their advantage Um, so many times people walk down they go. Oh, look, there’s the other side of tally I’ll swim across they start to swim within less than 20 strokes. They’re nearly under the bridge They’re going straight down the creek or they’re going out to sea and it happens so often So I think education is the first step Uh, number two is conditions when you actually get down there There’s such variants from a pool the pool’s so flat. It’s so controlled. You can see the bottom

There’s no creatures in there and uh, the next part is with packs So once you teach them about the safety of the water The chop the different sizes of the chop the way the swell comes how to use it It’s actually really enlightening for people to to learn that Then we go into stroke. I mean everything goes out the door I came and did your class with you and and I love that I learned so much from it I still put into practice what you taught me I’m a big fan on upskilling as much as I possibly can because you never know You never know everything and there’s always something new you can learn But what I find is is playing around with different strokes Different cadence different tempos How far your arm does go down? I know you’re really big on your your entry with your catch We try that but every now and then when there’s a two foot chop, you just can’t do that It’s it’s almost impossible. So there’s so much playing around with it and teaching different skill sets

Yeah, absolutely and You know things like you look at the ocean and it can be a scary thing But once you’ve got the the knowledge first of all, you know, you can use it through advantage You look at a you look at a rip and it’s kind of like a It’s like a chainsaw. It can be beneficial. It can cut down a tree or it can chop your arm off Right same thing with a with a with a rip It’s can take you out to sea out where you want to go or you know If you’re not sure what you’re doing it can you know really be a struggle to to get back in So by knowing that stuff then you’re a lot more relaxed And that’s really the first thing you need to have when you’re out there is just to to keep cool and I was reading a An article today about the story that you that people tell themselves Is a big factor in their heart rate? So if you’re out in the open water and your story is There’s creatures around there’s sharks here. I don’t know what’s going on. That’s the story. You’re telling yourself your heart rate

It’s going to be up here But if you’re thinking like I’m just I’m just a part of this and I can You know, I’m enjoying this and look the sun’s out Then you can keep your heart rate down and it’s a very different experience Have you sort of seen that when people have gone through your your classes unbelievably? So one of the biggest things that anyone that watches this that’s ever swam with me They’ll laugh about it because I’m a distractor So if I’m in the middle of a session and I’ve got someone that’s panicking their shallow breathing They’re only breathing into their chest and they’re actually not relaxed. I can pick it straight away First thing I do is I ask them the most random questions. So I take their mind off whatever they’re thinking about I’m really big on hours yesterday. I have you got kids or I just roll on with really random questions It’s amazing within three to four seconds. I can change someone’s

Breathing pattern. I can change the way that they’re thinking about the whole session With about 10 seconds they clue into what I’m doing and they start laughing the whole group starts laughing and they get really Really comfortable. So Anyone that’s watching this will just giggle because I do it to everyone and it’s usually first timers first or second session By the third session they’re clued into it and they’re they’re pretty wise to it And they’re smart that they know what I’m trying to do and and once it works It’s a great little technique that that takes everyone’s mind off it and they can think about the job at hand

And with you mentioned the british triathlon team coming out and and You had some of the surf surf iron man guys out racing with them and training with them just teaching them how to get out quickly and Getting them in that race mode And that’s something that I’ve seen just make such a difference if people can get that experience in the open water And get used to swimming in in tight groups and getting out quickly to the to the boys or the cans It’s um, I could just you need to do that. You can’t you can replicate it a bit in the pool But it’s you got to get out into the the open water So what what did you notice in those triathletes after a couple of days of You know doing that stuff that you were you were going through the first session We did the very first day when they got over I did a presentation power point presentation explaining the week and then I told them about the very first session They sort of laughed and giggled at it. But the first thing I noticed with any triathlete

Nearly all of them because they don’t train in open water and actually do the distance that they race It’s always short first thing that goes is their shoulders So most people train in the pool they tumble turn their arms get a rest every time they tumble turn If you throw someone straight into a 750 or a 1500 meter swim straight off the bat It really rattles them. So it’s about repetitious and and these guys just weren’t doing that They were jumping into a lake and they were doing a quick little sprint They were never really guiding themselves over the distance that they were racing Obviously as a coach you go over the distance so that you’re comfortable doing that that shorter distance and our first day Um, I introduced them to verly funny story and alexie that just got second at the olympics He actually got really seasick. So, um, he was at the back vomiting He went bright green and we swam all the way down the north burly and the first swim back was a 2k swim

And it was as you feel and it was very funny to watch what happened Some people went out on their own other people stuck as close as I’ve ever seen someone stick because they kept looking at the bottom like we’re talking about before the panic and We repeated that over and over and by the end of the five weeks. It was amazing the difference They were swimming tight knit. They were really close next to each other They actually had a plan rather than just jumping and going as hard as they could for as long as they could They set out a plan within that actual distance. So they knew that, um, tom bishops, for instance He would always stand on the start and let everyone go I couldn’t believe it. I was just flabbergasted and he said, oh, that’s my race plan You know, I want to let them go and then I work my way back and I just couldn’t believe that I thought that’s just absolutely crazy So we threw him in the deep end and I’d make him lead and have everyone come over the top of it

And uh, he realized that it actually isn’t that bad once you’re up in front. Yes, there’s argy bargy But it was just the different scenarios that they weren’t used to they weren’t Replicating what they raced in so we did it over and over and over again And they loved it. We had a great time one of their favorite sessions We would put shoes on and swim across telebudger a creek and then race over the bridge back But the rules were we had to be touching so everyone in the group had to be really tight Really close and it was just about pack swimming and learning that fear of actually being in the water And clashing with friends and when you got shoes on you learn really quickly about streamline And then you’re actually going to wade so they’re end of a triathlete race getting out of the water It’s amazing how many people swim to the ramp and they stop about a body length before it Their feet drop then they’ve got to take another four strokes just to get out of the water

So the little finer things is what we worked on and they loved it. We had a great time

Yeah, that’s it’s interesting about his his race strategy like even at that level It’s like I’d give that race strategy to someone who is just looking to survive the swim They’re first like first couple of triathlons, but at that level no, you want to have them You know be be at least Confident enough to try and get in some sort of pack in the beginning and then build from there. It’s um One of the things I noticed so I did a triathlon a couple years ago and my wife was just sort of filming the exit of the the swim and It was like I saw people walking or waiting for 50 60 meters Like because it was pretty shallow it’s it’s saying killed up and once they could roughly see the bottom They just walk in Same thing if you if you can just keep keep swimming in until you can like almost touch the bottom Then you can pause and and dolphin dive, but you’re right it’s all these little things that you can save so much time and

One of the things that I told my athletes is like you do Put in so much effort so much time in trying to get your hundred hundred pace down one or two or three seconds But there’s these other little things that might save you A minute in a race. It’s like you know siding swimming straight that kind of thing There’s all these things that uh that we sometimes forget to factor you’re you’re gonna laugh at this I’ve just had a new client come over from a um a triathlon company He has joined from brisbane. He drives down wonderful guy Is loving what we’re doing Anyway, he’s been doing triathlon for some years and his approach to the swim was he just hated the swim It wasn’t a good part of it could run well could cycle well, but just didn’t enjoy it So he’s been with us for about five weeks now. He had this is the greatest pb in history and i’m not bragging But he had a 45 minute pb So 45 minutes. So his normal um triathlon race was just gonna go bang. He’d let everyone go he’d walk in

He’d just dawdle behind them keep his head up majority of the way He’d only take about 10 or 15 strokes with his head down because he was so scared of what was under the water His last race that he did was a 45 minute pb. So I got a six pack of beer out of that one

I think you deserve to say that’s uh, wow, that’s awesome And and so for him, uh, it was just getting yeah, he’s he’s afraid of the ocean A lot of people think that there’s massive creatures underneath and they’re going to come up and grab them They’ve got this mentality of Watching social media and there’s all these different sharks and there’s crocodiles. There’s stingers There’s you know, australias got all of these amazing animals that can come out and bite you and grab you They think about it 24 7 like I have people literally just before it’s standing there putting their goggles on and their hands are Shaking as they’re putting their goggles on before they get in the water. I asked them the first thing What are they thinking about and they go sharks? That’s the first thing they say So we don’t we don’t say the word sharks in our group. It’s marine creatures So that’s what we try and promote so that no one actually says the word

I know it’s it’s a little bit simple, but it really works and we try and keep their their minds off that When he went into the race, he hated confrontation So he didn’t want to touch people. He didn’t want to be near people And he found that not only that he was breathing every four strokes Now he’s put his head in hold his breath for four strokes within three cycles. He was cooked He’d have to stop and do breaststroke So I it’s amazing how many people don’t even discuss that with their swimming coach their pool coach How they’re going to swim whether it’s a two stroke rotation or four stroke whatever it is But I mean there’s so many little parts to the swimming facet That you can fix a swim leg up and make up massive grounds Whereas on the bike you’re only going to get like you said a a smaller chunk of reward for your your investment This podcast is brought to you by our sponsor form goggles Form combines the world’s smartest goggles real-time metrics and guided workouts to make swimming fun

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So that’s one of the main reasons that I love the form goggles and use them nearly every swim that I do I have a lot of clients as well that use these in the open water to tell them what their pace is Because it can be a really hard thing to gauge when you go open water But the form swim goggles will tell you what your pace is when you’re swimming open water Which is a really beneficial thing to do, especially if you find it difficult to Not go out too fast or to sustain the same speed across a 1k or 2k swim The other thing I really like about the form goggles is that the form swim app it breaks down Everything about your session. So for a lot of sessions, I’ll look back and see what was my stroke rate What was my stroke count for certain parts of the main set and with that feedback you can see your progression over time So as you get fitter as your technique improves, you can see those things getting better

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Yeah, absolutely it um my my in-laws my yeah my in-laws they are All like I surf I try to surf every day And so every time they ask about the surface like Talking about sharks, and I’m like I don’t think about it like it’s I’ve seen I’m pretty sure I’ve seen one in my 15 years of surfing But that’s it and like yeah, sure they’re gonna be out there, but It you just don’t you don’t consider it because like it just You’d be so unlucky for it to happen But I I get it like people they you see the news and like maybe the one or two attacks a year It stays in their mind, but it’s it’s something to just You don’t really need to think about and then what you mentioned with the breathing cycles I’ve got a guy I’m working with at the moment And uh, he said I’m struck like I’m still getting really tired after 50 meters and what we found was he’s he’s breathing Was it seven? Oh my gosh. I breathing every seven seven five and then a four and it’s like man, I’ll be tired too

So it’s like all right. Let’s just start with two. So let’s just let’s just get comfortable doing that And uh, it’s gonna be much easier. And so yeah, that’s it makes a big difference Just some of those simple things that it’s easy to forget about yeah, we um Going back to the sharks a funny one. Um, and they’ll probably listen to this and have a laugh about it But I work with swimming Queensland Um swimming Queensland asked me to put on events where I teach their young open water swimmers I get kaihurst along and we work together with the young kids coming through and it’s all about pathways for the future and uh Then they won’t allow me to hold the session on the western side of the talabajara bridge They’ve heard off someone and from the officers said that they’re sharks on the other side So we’re not allowed to go over there. I mean, I swim there every day. It’s just comical and I yeah I just nod my head. I go yes. Sure. No worries. We’ll keep the other side. So

There’s so many people out there with these crazy theories about where the sharks are and where they aren’t but Um getting back to that that breathing cycle Yeah, we um, I deal with two things, you know, I do a lot of breath control too I do a lot of um hypoxic where we we teach people how long they can actually hold their breath for until they pop And we do it in a really controlled where it’s standing up. So if they they do pop They just got to put their feet down But it’s funny people think they could only hold their breath for you know, five or six They end up holding it for 18 20 some people can get up to 30 And then it makes them realize that, you know, they’ve got a great lung capacity There’s no reason why they can’t recycle their air faster and keep that going so they don’t puff out and it works It works absolute wonders and they love doing it and they realize that holding their breath for four and

Four six or eight is just absolutely crazy, especially if you’re in a race because you’ve got nerves You’ve got panic the adrenaline is rushing through the body and you’re just gonna you’re gonna pop really quick

Such a common thing that I Get from people is like I’m even I’m breathing every three and it’s just like I’m getting pretty tired It’s like and they’re breathing every three because they’re they’re told by lateral is the way to go And it’s a skill you can we discuss this? I’d like to find out a few being the swim coach Let’s talk about it because a lot of my guys have the same issue Me personally I worked with Dennis Cotchall for years and he tried to do a little bit of bilateral with me But he realized very early on that I just couldn’t do it. I felt really uncomfortable my left hand side every time I breathe it it saw on my neck I’m really comfortable when I write so I’ve stuck with that my whole career I pass on the same knowledge that Dennis taught me. What’s your your thoughts on that?

Yes, so mine it’s it’s essentially I want people to be able to do it But then just go with whatever works best for you That’s it like You might need it Perhaps if it’s choppy on one side you need to turn to the the other side And if you are comfortable with it then do a little bit of bilateral Me personally I’m normally like 30 percent to my non-preferred side during training 70 percent to the other But I’ll just I’ll mix up my breathing pattern depending on the the speed But when I’m racing it’s all that’s in a controlled pool, isn’t it?

Yeah in a pool, but like yeah when I’m racing in open water, it’s Only to the left every two. There you go. I’m exactly the same. I’m to the right every two for me. I’m exactly the same

Yeah, yeah, there you go. Like it’s it’s just some of those like Those like phrases or you know things that people that just get ingrained and people think it has to be that way But it’s it’s just not they call them craig riddington You just have one arm bigger than the other the clock and people think that’s what’s going to happen You know the fact that you’re only breathing one side you’re going to build up stronger on one side It’s irrelevant to that. It’s it’s not going to come into play. So great to hear that you’re exactly the same as me

I was listening to Carl Chalmers on Brett Hawks podcast recently and just after he broke the 100 freestyle short course world record And he breathed Pretty much the whole hundred he breathed every two There might have been the occasional four in there perhaps off the start or something But he breathed every two and he was saying that he’d spoke with his coach about it And he felt like he just couldn’t get the same length when he was breathing a four So for him that that breath actually helped get a little bit more length in the stroke And and I think perhaps just finding a more consistent rhythm And so that’s for 100, you know where he could could breathe every four strokes the first 50 and then maybe come back to twos but There you go at even the top speed Breathe at two cycles faster for him, which I found quite interesting. It’s a crazy area We’ve got a lady in our group called Sue George. She’s going to laugh at this

So only last week I pulled her up on our short sprints. We just did 40 strokes hard out Recover back 30 strokes hard out recover back. It was all about getting the heart rate up She was holding her breath for eight Now you imagine holding your breath for eight and you’re doing 40 And she just popped her head up and she said this is the hardest thing in the world I said the reason it’s so hard is because you’re holding your breath. I said relax. She couldn’t believe it It changed her whole outlook on it and she absolutely loved the session, which was really cool

That’s awesome We were doing some breath control this morning and it was 150 meters after some sprints and It was going 50 breathing three five seven and I was I was going five five seven But I was done after that 150 holding every seven like I just made it Because my heart rate was up and if I’m going easy and I got rest in between I can go go longer than that but Yeah, just goes to show if there’s any sort of effort in there get get the air in that’s the one The one thing I love about that set you’re talking about there is what it does is it takes you away from all of the Biomechanics of swimming the reason being is that when I try and teach people swimming There is so much to flood them with it’s crazy. So keep it simple Keep it streamlined. But when we do that is they are concentrating so hard on their breath That they forget about everything. There’s no worries about the creatures There’s no worries about anything because they’re so worked up about holding their breath

I love it. I’m a big fan of the three five seven. It’s a cracker

Yeah, yeah, it’s good, isn’t it and uh, and so you just came back from Hamilton island as you mentioned with a Swim escape there. What’s uh, I think of the the camps I’ve done overseas a little bit different to yours We sort of focus a bit more on the technical side of things in terms of their stroke And we still do some open water swims and things like that But it’s um, but you’re doing it more of this swim escape where you’re getting a big group of people together taking them on open water swims every day and And really getting like people to form new friendships and just have a good weekend a good week away Can you talk about some of the things that You think of really like working well with that and and what you’re finding people are getting at at the moment My biggest clientele is middle-aged mums I didn’t realize how big an industry there is of mothers where the kids have just left home The husbands the the main source of income

They’re basically sitting there twiddling their thumbs and they’re no longer Looking after the kids and they’re looking for a new avenue. They’re looking for something in life That’s going to give them a bit of enjoyment a bit of a thrill and not only that They’re life’s been so engrossed with their kids that they’ve they’ve lost a lot of friends Not so much lost, but they’ve just let them pass So once I started this business, I couldn’t believe how many mums are out there and my groups 90% full of middle-aged mums and What I try to do is I try to bring people together And when they come together, we call it the like monitor community and the tribe and we basically Don’t work on techniques. So I give simple little pointers Stroke correction breathing the basics of kicking, but I’m not there to turn them into olympic swimmers I’m there to create a community where people absolutely love it and they have a great time

So for instance our trip away to hamilton island, we did two this year our first one which was june We took 60 people up there That was a four-day budget trip where we swam everything out for front of hamilton island and every day Our job as a coach was to not mingle with them during the day But only swim with them at the group so that they actually I’m a bit of a larrick and a bit of a A clown and I like to have fun. So once I step back, they all start to form their relationships and become friends From that group of 60 in june. We had about six or seven re-signed from november. They loved it that much This one was a deluxe swim. So we went up there in the first day. We went out on an 82 foot sunseeker yacht The same yacht that george cluney booked the day after us It was pretty cool little thing to throw in there But we swam over it. We were meant to swim at whitehaven. The weather was really bad So they took us to chance bay and we um, we swam four kilometers along this amazing backdrop cliff

And my rule as a coach is that we shouldn’t swim anything further than four or five hundred metres at any time One because I want the tail enders to catch up I I openly offered Fins to anyone and out of our group of 30 there would have been probably 15 that took fins just because they wanted to enjoy it On the swim, we see turtles. We see fish. We saw coral. We see absolutely everything We have a jet ski that follows us at the whole time Steve our water safety. He’s at the back with the rescue tube as well I swim around the group the whole time So I lead with my green bubble and play around and have a chat with everyone After that, we go back to the boat and have lunch on the boat. Um, the following day We actually swam down hills inlet. So if anyone’s seen whitehaven, we actually swam down the river Um, we got right on the inside and the boat comes right in and picks us up on the inside, which is I’ve been wanting to do it for years and just never had the opportunity and to be able to do that

It’s just phenomenal that the water quality the way that the tide moves in There’s no one around your your own place there because everyone stays up at the front So we had the whole creek to ourselves and it was it was a phenomenal life changing swim Um, what I also try to do is I finish a lot of my swims off with a race So once we finish the two days of hard swimming, we then back it off And we do real simple sessions off the front of Katzai beach and we make it fun A couple of relays if you need to we looked at turtles It’s amazing how many turtles are at Hamilton Island And then the sundaes the Hamilton Island ocean swim For me as a coach and training people that are first off They’re afraid of the ocean number two They think they can’t swim and the fact that they actually get there and they either do the 750 or the 2k race It’s a really invigorating moment for me I jumped in and actually had a swim my son was in it as well. So it’s the first time I raced my son

He actually won that open He won the overall thing which was pretty exciting for me and I gotta I saw that I got a bit emotional I’ve got a bit teary towards the end my wife was there screaming and I crossed the line and he’s he’s got the one finger up I couldn’t believe it so But for me more than anything I had two or three ladies that didn’t want to end of the race And I said look you don’t have to end of the race. It’s not it’s not pressured to do it But I’m confident you love it if you actually did it. I had one lady chris from Tasmania She did it and when we started about About eight months ago. She couldn’t take six strokes without standing up and stopping So from eight months we got her into the into the seven week A 750 swim and she swam the whole 750 without fins to the beach and stood up and ballerized out She just couldn’t believe it. She’s hugging me. I’m hugging her everyone’s crying and I’m just about to race and it was the most emotional race

It was so wonderful to see so For me, it’s about creating a tribe creating a community I love learning off you and and getting different things, but it’s not so much about passing that on it’s about having fun It’s about enjoying it and creating memories for life

Yeah, absolutely. It’s uh, I’ve just found Running running um the camps that we do it’s that community and tribe like we have people come back Each year and like you just yeah, you just when you spend that long together and you you go through those sessions and Like people that’s what I found in terms of like my swimming friends growing up like when you’re in there You’re all working hard. They’re all Like-minded you you make such different friendships. I think then you do through you know other things Because you’ve you’ve got that sort of group worth work ethic and Blood sweating to the thing the thing that amazed me is at the end of every single swim So we swam I think it was seven times over the five the six days that were there Not including the race or the pre-race prep But at the end of every session they clap and cheer and they hug each other If someone’s a long way behind on one of the swimming efforts and it takes them a little bit longer to get in

Without me even queuing them they’ll turn around and the whole team will start cheering them on and clapping and When they get in one or two of the girls will go over and hug them and tell them how great a job they’ve done So it’s really self-encouraging and to sit back and watch A little community that you’ve created do that. It’s it’s awe-inspiring

Yeah, it’s so good like And again, like where else do you get that probably not many as an adult get it with you get it with kids They’ve got their sporting clubs. They’ve got their school stuff going on but for adults, you know We’re we’re starved for that kind of recognition and support. I think um I think on top of that is that we’re so worried about everyone else And if you’re a normal human being you worry about your kids You worry about your wife your husband whatever it is You forget about yourself and everyone forgets about themselves So for my squad when they turn up for instance this morning we ranged We had about 70 there this morning swimming with Ty and I And it ranges from nine year old kids to we had a 79 year old lady swimming with us Now we split it up into our for our for bravo charlie group and that just goes on your ability So we don’t judge it doesn’t matter what level you are But to see an individual actually turn up when the hubbies off cycling or the kids are at the pool swimming

And they’ve found their niche. They’ve found their environment that they want to thrive in They just love it and the coffee after it that’s meant to take 10 or 15 minutes ends up being a two hour coffee

That’s right one one hour swing to our coffee. That’s that’s not that

Yeah, it’s uh, and I saw that a lot over the last 18 months with uh, basements here in melbourne is Seems like a lot of people started swimming in the bay because pools are closed and uh, and and they’ve formed these really good Communities where I think they’ve got the you’ve got the cold water So a lot of them are going no wetsuit and so that’s a that’s a big factor And but then just they’ve got their community of like five 10 15 swimmers That um, we’ll swim for half an hour if it’s 10 degree water and then catch up You’re gonna have that Yeah, look, I that’s I’m not bragging about 10 degree water. I don’t go in it. Um Yeah, I think you’ve got it pretty good up there on the go. Yeah, we do. We’ve got great water. Um, we’re very lucky We’ve got um velary wetsuits up here based out of southport and and they found ty and i early on in this episode and we jumped on board with velary and it’s amazing how many people

Still wear wetsuits the water is 21 degrees and they’ll still rock up and wear a full steamer Just because they’re comfortable, but number two is they’re really buoyant So if you’re a new swimmer and you’re learning, um, you could either wear the shorts or you wear the wetsuit But a wetsuit actually raises you up out of the water circulates the water in your chest and Takes away that chill where you’re shaking and thinking about not thinking about your stroke or your breathing and It creates a really controlled environment so that you’re having fun while you’re doing it So we’ve been very lucky that velary came on board and and helped us out but 10 more 10 degree water We just we would not do that for the wildest dream. I wouldn’t be involved with that at all I don’t worry not not many male burnings do either unless it’s desperate times and they’ve been out of the pool for a while So yeah, um and in terms of what you’ve got, uh, you’ve got coming up with uh with the business

What’s happened? Um, I just signed on with um the world series swim I am now going to be running their pre-race swims. Uh, so before nusa before bondi before I don’t know about porti. We we don’t think we’re going to get down to porti, but My goal there is to jump in and actually help people conquer that fear and and know what they’re doing So at nusa last year when they ran it, um, I took 50 people up there for a swim escape and It was really obvious my group when I told them where to go in How to turn the buoy? What to site it was obvious that my group was really having a great run and a great line in the water So how to chat with them? They’ve let me come on board So I run two sessions before each one of those a nine o’clock and a four o’clock session And I talk about tactics, um, what to eat how to mentally prepare for it When the race starts how to identify which way the water is moving and how to actually do a race where

You enjoy it rather than being nervous walking down there. So that’s one of the first ones Second is that we’re not far from the board is opening internationally So I’m going to actually take this internationally. We’re going to go over to puke. We’re going to go to the Maldives We’re looking at hawaii And then june it looks like I’m going to be heading over to To england to work with the british triathlon team again They’ve just signed me up three years, which is pretty exciting times But on the home front, um, we’ve got a lot going on. I’m really excited. We’ve talked about it on this podcast The adults out there in australia That don’t have the opportunity to jump in and an adult learn to swim session where it’s not pool driven And it’s more about fun and community. I start that on monday I’ve got miranda goodwin. Who’s a anichagrain eye woman. She’s working alongside with me that So she’s a qualified learn to swim coach

So we’ll be working together with them and and I’ve got to tell you That’s more thrilling than than coaching an athlete to a title It’s so fun to watch someone’s journey from from where they start to where they end and and seeing them embrace it and Enjoy it along the line. So The business that started off with one or two sessions is now blown out my weeks out of control and And every minute every minute’s chewed up. I’m I’m actually catching up with uh, a 12 o’clock with jay ma from yourongapool in brisbane So he sends all of his swimmers down that want to start open water swimming They have to come and do my safety course my ocean course before it. So I’m catching up with him for lunch at twill We’ve got a couple of ideas of different ways to approach it So we can get more people involved with open water swimming and teach them the right way so they have a great time doing it

Fantastic, well, I love the work that you’re doing and it’s it’s just great to have that that available to people and We’re coming from your background and experience. I couldn’t think of anyone better to to be doing that So I appreciate you being on the podcast and I’ve really enjoyed chatting with you today and If I ever get up to Queensland one day again, uh, hopefully next year Yeah, certainly would I’d love to jump in do the course again, you know upskilling is a massive part of coaching I’m a huge fan of it. I also love what you’re doing online and all your videos All your podcasts great to jump on and for any coach out there It’s just so easy to watch and listen to the finer little things that you do that make such a different for anyone swimming So thanks for having me on um, if anyone wants to reach me they can reach me at philclaytonandcode.com We’re open to everyone. We’ve got a lot of different things on the website and uh, have us scroll through and

Hopefully I can help out get out there and help more swimmers get involved with open water swimming

Yeah, thank you and we’ll put those in the show notes and when when people see the the drone shots from tully creek and And some of those shots from hamilton island. I don’t think you’ll need much persuasion to get them get them along It’s uh, it’s awesome. So thanks again phil and uh, yeah talks in 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 Uncovering The Magic Of Ocean Swimming with Phil Clayton appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is a fellow coach, a competitor, a triasthlete who has done a huge amount of racing. He has done one of the longer distance triathlon that there is, the Ultraman.

01:50 Competition/ Coaching Background
03:58 Training From Ironman To Ultraman
06:37 Not Too Much Running
07:28 Swim Training
08:33Swim Techniques
09:59 Open Water Swimming Skills
15:07 Coaching Triathletes
17:45 Changes In Coaching Approach
23:24 Focused On Mature Athletes
29:36 They Are Not Going To Remember All These Things Straight Away
30:56 Upcoming Events
32:39 Swimming Is A Great Body Maintenance

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But, you know, I had the same challenge when I first started coaching, frustrated the hell out of me that I couldn’t even swim right, just swim right. I don’t know how to tell you to do it, right? Yeah. You should just do it this way.

And I think the biggest learning I had was that people learn in different ways and one prompt or cue might work for one individual, but for another, it’s meaningless and they can’t get the head around it. So it’s important to have several different cues to try and get the same point across. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is a fellow coach but also a competitor, a triathlete who has done a huge amount of racing and has done one of the longer distance triathlons that there is, Ultraman, and done incredibly well. So, John McCann, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks, Brenton. Welcome. I think I’m happy to be here. It’s a good morning. Look, it’s before nine o’clock, so you’ve got all the excuses you like being over in WA. And I mean, for you guys over there, it seems like it’s been pretty much unchanged with how things have been over the last couple of months or last 12 months or so in terms of racing and that kind of thing. Yeah, we’ve been pretty lucky over here. We’ve missed them again, locking the border down and keeping the virus out. We’ve pretty much had business as usual so our races are going ahead. A lot of them are selling out, which is really great. And yeah, training carries on as usual.

Got a lot of people from over here who are hoping to be able to get over to BUSSO and race next year because it’s such a great event. And for you, for your background, could you let the listeners know sort of what your background is in terms of competition and coaching because you’ve got a wealth of experience in triathlon and a pretty handy swim yourself. So for those listening, John competed in Ultraman in 2021 and you had the fastest swim leg, the 10K swim in averaging pretty much just over 130s, I think it was, was it? Yeah, about 133s. Yeah, which is pretty handy. So yeah, for those listening, what’s your background in terms of triathlon? Yeah, I’ve been in triathlon for a while. I started in 1986. So a lot of your listeners probably weren’t even born at that time, so it’s 36 years in the business. I started at high school, had a PE teacher who was, he said, hey, there’s this great new sport called triathlon, you really should give it a go

because you’re pretty handy around the track and you’re a good swimmer. At the time I didn’t have a bike so that was the one thing I needed to build on. But in sort of the last 36 odd years, probably raced over 300 races now. And in the last 10 years, the focus has moved more towards longer distance and Ironman events. So I’ve competed seven Ironmans in the last 10 years. I find as I get older, I get a bit slower and the longer distances are a lot more appealing, the lower intensity and just a little more of a casual day out. Although I still do love the sprint races and the standard distance races. So I’m not gonna throw a few of those out every year as well.

You know, obviously with most athletes, they keep looking for the next big thing and you go through the standard, then the 70.3 and then the Ironman, once you’ve done a few Ironmans, just say, well, okay, what’s next? And obviously I sort of looked over to Noosa and saw the Ultraman event and thought, oh yeah, I’ll give that a crack. And signed up for that actually for the 2020 event which was cancelled due to COVID though. I had a bit of an extended training period getting ready for that race which finally went ahead in May this year. And in terms of the differences in training for the two events, so from Ironman to Ultraman, how did you change your approach?

It’s not all that different, to be honest. I sort of looked back at some of my training peak stats for the last couple of years. And for Ironman, I’d typically do between 15 and 20 hours of training a week for Ultraman. It was a little more than that to the 20 to 25 hour range. And the primary difference was the amount of time spent on the bike. So with Ultraman, with a day one on Ultraman for the listeners that may not be aware of the race is a 10K swim followed by 140K bike ride. And that bike ride has about 1300 meters of elevation gain. Then on day two, you get out of bed and just whack out a nice easy 280K ride with 2,300 meters of elevation gain. So it’s not by no means a flat ride course. And then on the third day, you’re back it all up with a double marathon, an 84K run along the coast at Noosa there, which again isn’t flat, probably 500 meters of climbing in that day as well. So a huge emphasis on the bike

and getting comfortable on the bike for very long periods of time. So quite often out on the bike for between five and eight hours for the long training sessions in the lead up to the race. So that’s the primary difference. The other thing that a lot of people are probably concerned about when they think about Ultraman is all there’s this double marathon that you’ve got to get ready for. And it would be unwise to do a lot of

high volume run training in the lead up to an event like that. The running portion, as everyone knows, is quite punishing on the body. And when you’re fatigued and run down from long ride sessions, it’s dangerous to do too much running. So I had a bit of a different strategy. My running was actually pretty minimal leading into Ultraman. I replaced that training with more time in the pool, which gave me sort of both base fitness and the opportunity to recover from some of the bike rides. And rather than doing long miles in running, I focused on gym work to try and build leg strength.

Wasn’t necessarily by plan. I had some injuries going into the race. So that meant that running for me was a little bit difficult, but reflecting back on it, it was a really good strategy that worked well for race day. So if you were to do it again, you’d take that same approach of not doing too much running and just building up the strength. Absolutely. Yeah, I’d like to have done more running. It was sort of back on the data, I was averaging 10 to 20 K a week in the runs for the six weeks leading up to Ultraman and virtually nothing in the three months prior to that due to calf injuries.

That’s clearly not enough to get through an 84 K run. I was actually telling the guys I was racing with at the 20 K marker, the run that this was the longest run I’d done in the last six months. And most of them looked at it a little bit short and then proceeded to run off into the sunset.

But yeah, I mean, the good news was I did manage to get through the strength work in the gym, the long miles on the bike all contributed to some good overall fitness and strength that meant that I was able to run the full distance of the double marathon, albeit a little bit slower than what I would have preferred to have done if I had the right level of training. Did for the swim, what sort of training were you doing in the lead-up to Ultraman? Yeah, I don’t change my swim training a lot. With the swimming background, that’s my strongest leg and I love the swim. It’s what I get the most enjoyment out of. So for me, three to four swims a week is normal. That’s kind of my base training, regardless of what events are coming up. And I’ll normally knock out between 12 and 15 K a week with that sort of duration.

Most weeks, I’ll focus on one to two sort of longer endurance swims.

One more of a hard threshold hit out and then I’ll usually have a more resting recovery technique focused swim most weekends, usually after a long ride just to stretch things out a little bit and just lock in the right sort of technique cues. And what are some of those technique cues that you focus on?

Well, for me, I’ve had a look at some of my own video of how I swim and it looks terrible. I mean, I’m embarrassed. I’m not a pretty swimmer. I get relatively quick, but my stroke doesn’t look smooth at all. I have a tendency to have quite a big arch in my back to try and maintain that level body position. And that’s predominantly because I’ve got a tendency to lift my head and look forward.

I also have to do a lot of work and think really hard about my catch, to make sure that I’m keeping a nice high elbow through the catch and pull phase of this stroke. So for me, people ask me sometimes, what do you think about during a 10k swim? For me, I’m constantly thinking about technique cues. What can I do to try and make this stroke a little bit more efficient and life a little bit easier for me?

And that usually gets me through. Yeah, and I find it similar when I’ve ever done those sort of longer events or races. It’s like in the back of your mind, it’s always just trying to keep your form, as well as obviously just keeping track of your pace and making sure you’re not going too hard or letting your mind drift and slowing down. But I mean, being at the sort of level you are with your swimming, there’s got to be some things you do well. So what do you think some of those strengths are of your stroke, even if it doesn’t look smooth, as you say, or look pretty? Yeah, it’s a good question.

One thing I noticed is that I am a little bit quicker in a wetsuit. And one of the great things about Ultraman is that it is a wetsuit legal swim. So I tend to get a little bit better body position once I do have the wetsuit on, and that helps quite a bit. I’m quite an experienced open water swimmer. Last year, I did a solo swim to Rocknest Islands. It’s a big event here in Perth. And that’s a Rocknest Islands, about 20K off the coast of Perth. So one morning a year, a couple of thousand people line up on the beach in Perth and they swim across to Rocknest Island. And that was great fun. That took me just over six hours. And I had a ball. And that’s a non wetsuit swim in sort of rough open water.

But that open water swim experience, I think makes a big difference. And I do practice it quite a lot in the lead up to races. So the sort of six to eight weeks before a race, I will add one to two open water swims into my program and just focus on basic open water skills like the siding, making sure that I can breathe both directions in case I’ve got weather coming from one side or another. I’ve got quite a swingy recovery, which helps particularly in rough water, as you know. So I think those open water skills make a big difference. Now being able to swim in a straight line is critical. I’ve got a lot of athletes that swim well, but you get them in open water and they zigzag around a little bit and cover a couple of extra hundred meters, which is not great for your overall race speed. But that’d be the primary thing I’d say that I have as a strength is those open water skills and just time in the open water.

And training for Rocknest, was that the first time? The only time you’ve done it? Yeah, it is. Entry is open today. And I’m quite tempted to have another run at it, but I think I’ll take another year off and think about it sometime in the future. Yeah, you got me. I swam at maybe four or five. I can’t remember four or five years ago now. And I love the training for it. I really enjoyed the training and I love race day as well, apart from the last probably hour, hour and a half, where I really started to feel it. But it’s such a great event. And I just, I love the feeling of being that fit that swim fit. Whereas I don’t think I’ve been that swim fit before, but not for like distance swimming, more for like competition. And yeah, it’s just, it’s really got me wanting to train again, especially after being out at the pool for so long. Yeah, no, I know what you mean. It was, for me, I enjoyed the focus on one discipline for a change.

So I did months with just focus mostly on the pool. My coach was, my coach was Shelly Taylor-Smith. So she’s a world renowned open water swimmer and she was quite disappointed that I did still do a little bit of cycling and running while swimming with her. I’ve got quite a few talkings too and quite a few about not being,

not carrying quite enough body fat to get over the cold water conditions either. So she told me about being more and running and running to try and build up a bit more body fat.

Did you feel the cold during the race? Yeah, I struggled in some of the lead up events to the swim. So early in the season, the water was quite cool and getting towards the end of some of the five and 10K warm up swims, I was feeling it. So I was a bit nervous on the day, but the day turned out to be relatively mild and I didn’t have any temperature issues along the way.

Oh, that’s, it’s fortunate. Yeah, I felt it probably 13, 14 Ks in. And I just can’t, so one of the guys I coached years ago, he trained up for the English Channel and it took, I don’t know, he has, I don’t think he’s ever got back down to his weight pre-training for the channel because the amount of weight he had to put on. But I just look at that and go, man, I don’t want to have to put on like five, I don’t know, probably like five or six kilos to, to avoid feeling it. Although that said, if I was to swim rocknest now apart from my fitness, I’d probably be fine because I’ve, I stepped on the scales the other day and I went, all right, you got to do something now. It’s time to start, start training again because it’s, yeah, without much swimming, it’s, it’s not pretty, but I just, yeah, I find it hard to put on the weight. I just don’t want to, you know, it’s not a good feeling. That’s a dilemma for all athletes

is you don’t really want to put it on because you know how hard it is to get it off. And particularly if, if swimming is one thing that you do but you do a lot of cycling and running as well, the extra weight for cycling and running is really works against you. So, you know, for me, it didn’t, you know why I did have a little bit of extra weight for rocknest. It didn’t make a lot of sense to do a lot of running at that time either just because of the added load that the weight would put on me. And let’s jump over to you, your coaching now. So how long have you been coaching other triathletes for?

I guess it was about six years ago that I did my triathlon Australia coaching qualification. And at that time, my wife and I formed a coaching business called TriExcel and we sort of worked that in the background with our day jobs. We’re both engineers working for major energy companies at the time. So we didn’t have a lot of spare time and we only coached a sort of a handful of athletes. And then this year, we’ve both sort of taken a step back from full-time work and the coaching is now

a little more taking front and center. So we’ve ramped up our activity there, taking on a few more athletes and having a great time with it. Was that always the plan or is it just something that you found? You enjoyed the coaching and you thought, okay, yeah, this could be all right to do a bit more. I mean, we love the coaching. It’s such a fulfilling career choice, helping people out. And most people, when you sort of get them through a big event or a big block of training are so grateful for what you do for them. It’s quite satisfying to get that feeling. And you notice the swim coach that if you can get a breakthrough in someone’s stroke or improve their fitness, they’re just so grateful. When you come out of the big corporate world where you really don’t get thanks for anything, it’s more, why didn’t you do this better?

It’s a great feeling to work with people and feel like you’re making a difference for them. So we’ve been loving it. It’s always probably just gonna be a hobby business for us, just something we do in the background because we enjoy it, keeps us connected to the tri-thlet community. And so it helps us in our own education. So one of the greatest things about taking on the coaching courses was sort of learning for myself, even though I had about 30 years experience in the sport, there’s so much you don’t know and there’s so much that is changing and that we’re discovering every day that things change. We’re no longer running speedos. So that’s disappointing, but technology moves on. Yeah, I look back, I see some of those photos from the 90s of Chris McCormack and some of those guys running around in the speedos. And I mean, there’s very few who do it these days and those that do stand out like us all for better or worse.

So yeah, things do change quite a bit. But in terms of your approach for coaching people on the swim portion of it over that six years, has your approach changed at all? Because I found like for me, coming from a swimming background, things come very naturally, but then when I had to start coaching it, it was like, all right, you’ve really got to take a step back because if you haven’t grown up swimming, then for those people learning later on, it’s very different. And I really had to come up with a different approach compared to how I was taught. Yeah, look, I’ve had exactly the same experience as you. And I love the work you do because I sort of feel your pain in terms of looking at the way we were taught to swim and the drills that we were given as kids. And you kind of step back and say, well, hang on, what’s this actually trying to achieve? And in most cases, it’s really difficult to get a connection between the type of drill that’s been prescribed

and some sort of specific improvement. So I really love the way you’ve broken the stroke down and explained it to swimmers in a way that’s easy for them to understand. But, you know, I had the same challenge when I first started coaching, frustrated the hell out of me that I couldn’t, it wouldn’t swim right, just swim right. I don’t know how to tell you to do it, right? Yeah. You should just do it this way. And I think the biggest learning I had was that people learn in different ways and one prompt or cue might work for one individual. But for another, it’s meaningless and they can’t get the head around it. So it’s important to have several different cues to try and get the same point across.

So thinking about a high elbow through your pull phase of your stroke. You know, I often use the term, you know, you’ve got to get over the barrel. That’s the prompt that I use because to me, that kind of makes sense. You know, you’ll have a high elbow if you visualize a sort of barrel under your armpit. But for a lot of people, that’s meaningless. That’s, you know, they can’t quite understand what that means. So you’ve got to find a different way of describing it. And usually two or three different ways before you can get something that will click. Yeah, that’s, yeah, it’s interesting you say that. I find the exact same thing. And I’ll then try and use that cue with someone else and it might work and it might fix it or it might just go, no, all right, let’s take a different approach. And I’ve had to explain that as well to the listeners that I coach like online who will send videos quite regularly because it’s, yeah, we’ll try something

that might not work and say, all right, that’s all right. Let’s just take a different approach and see if this works. And we eventually get there, but I think it’s important for them as well not to feel like they’re like defeated that that’s never gonna work because this one way didn’t work. Now, everyone’s different. And even for, you know, you’ve got the experience of coaching lots of people you might not get that cue or that approach right first time. So it does take a couple of attempts to get there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the funniest cue that I’ve come up with is one that I use in my life and I’ve tried to improve her swimming for about 30 years now. And, you know, she’s taken on the catch challenge and she’s doing your eight week faster freestyle program because she’s given up with me trying to coach her basically. But the one breakthrough we had before was she was struggling to get her shoulder elbow

and wrist aligned as they pass below her body. And she was always leading with her elbow and we used sort of various prompts to try and correct that. But the one that stuck with her was, I finally said to her, look, you’re swimming like a T-Rex. You know, like a big dinosaur with short arms and your elbow is pulling through first. And that was the prompt that sort of clicked something and I’m like, oh, now I get it. And when she looked at the video, she said, yeah, that’s exactly the way it looks and the way it feels. And now I know what I need to do to try and correct that. So I think you’ve just got to get creative sometimes and everyone’s got a different prompt that’ll stick with them. I like that one. That’s so good. I was actually doing analysis about her just before we started filming. And the same thing with the swimmer was the elbow was just pulling through much too soon before the hand had moved down.

And yeah, I’ll see if that one works for him. And I mean, I think of my, I’ve seen my wife swim once and I think it was on our honeymoon and she swam in the pool and I laughed because I thought this is so funny. I’ve never seen her swim but we’d been together for like, I don’t know, seven years or something or six years. And then when she saw me laughing, she stopped swimming. She’s like, I’m never swimming in front of you again. So I haven’t seen her swim since. So yeah, I get your pain. It’s different when it’s family. So yeah, whereas you’ve probably got the athletes coming to you, he’ll listen to every word that you say. But when it’s someone related, it’s a lot harder. It’s a lot more challenging, yeah, for sure. My dad was my coach and I think lucky for him that I was a good student and I listened to him and didn’t sort of play up like it you could find with a father, son sort of coaching duo. But yeah, it’s just,

and I’ve never really had a different coach in my sort of formative years as a teenager growing up. But yeah, I think it’s lucky for him that I listened because I look at my young kids now who are three and five and even just trying to get them to do some basic stuff in the pool, they do not listen. Whereas if it’s with the teacher or with their grandma, yeah, they’ll listen, but it’s so much harder that way. And with the athletes that you’re coaching, a lot of them, I mean, you’ve probably got a wide range of athletes, but where do you find most of them are with their swimming? Are they fairly new to it? Are they in survival mode? Or are they pretty comfortable? Yeah, so we specifically focus on more mature athletes in our coaching business. We feel like that’s where our strength is. People that maybe have got busy careers, busy family lives, trying to fit a lot in, may not have come into the sport until a little bit later on in their life

and are looking for sort of new challenges. So typically sort of in the older age groups, majority of them don’t have a swimming background. In fact, I’d say none of them have a swimming background. I’d love to have an athlete that can swim.

But most of them have sort of come into swimming late in life and have developed some pretty bad habits.

So I tend to, I prefer to actually video all of my athletes before I write a program for them, primarily so that for the sections of the workouts that I prescribe for them, I can be a bit more specific about the sort of drills that will give them some benefit and help them improve. I’m a strong believer in speed. In older athletes, getting faster in swimming is not about swimming more. It’s not about swimming harder. It’s about correcting stroke deficiencies. That’s where the gains are to be made. I think you’ve demonstrated that with a lot of your clients that just correcting a few sort of minor stroke deficiencies can yield a 10, 20, 30 second per hundred improvement. So I try and encourage my athletes to really focus on the drill portion of their workouts

and just being consistent. I’d much rather someone knock out two swims a week every week for six months than four swims one week and those swims the next week and those swims the week after that. So for me, swimming is all about consistency, doing it regularly. And it’s about really focusing on getting the technique rather than trying to kill yourself every time you’re in the pool and sprint against your mates. Yeah, I completely agree. And are those athletes, are they all local? So you’re able to film them yourself or you’re getting the sense of footage? Yeah, at the moment, they’re all local. So I’m actually at the pool with the GoPro filming them. But if they weren’t, yeah, we would, we try and get them to get a friend to video them so we could at least have a look at what we’re dealing with. And are you, with the footage, are you then doing the analysis there with them or are you like then sending it onto them

or how do you, what’s that process like for you? Yeah, it’s, we typically spend sort of half an hour in the pool with the camera and then I let them finish their workout while I download that video. And then once they’ve wrapped up their swim, we sit down together and I sort of walk them through what I’m seeing just at a very sort of high level first view. What I find is that I spot a lot of brief, I can actually get some quiet time and sit down and go over the videos a couple of times. So I’ll usually pick up one or two other things

when I’ve, when I sort of get home with the video and take a closer look at it on the bigger screen. And then usually, you know, my preference is only to give people one or two things to think about. You can usually spot, you know, maybe five or six deficiencies with a stroke. And the challenge for me is working out what are the one or two things that will give them the biggest bang for the buck. And usually it comes down to your body position as probably the primary one and then sort of focus on the catch is the other area where I see a lot of improvements. And after they’ve got those things to work on you then prescribing them specific drills and then explaining the purpose behind them. And then how much of those drills would you normally prescribe? Yeah, absolutely. We usually, there’s a handful of basic drills that are good for correcting a lot of issues in swimming as long as you give the swimmer the right prompt

on what they’re focused on during that drills or catch up is a great example where you can use that to correct a lot of sins as long as you’re directing the swimmer what aspects of the stroke are you trying to really focus on while you’re doing that drill? So I like to observe all the swimmers doing their drills to make sure that they’re executing them correctly. And then once you’ve seen the video and we know what they need to work on then I sort of focus them in on, okay when you’re doing that drill here’s what I’d like you to really think about in practice.

And then in the programming, what I normally do is I like to include drills every time they get in the pool. So it’ll usually range from somewhere between

500 and a K of drill work that they’ll be doing

and sort of mixing up the different drills to give them a little bit of variety but always focusing on those one or two things that are their biggest areas for improvement. Yeah, nice. I really like that approach and obviously we use something pretty much along those lines as well. And I was doing a gym session yesterday so I’ve started going to Kaiser which is a gym near me and one of the things that they have with their exercises it’s like it’s one round and to basically to like nine out of 10 fatigue for 90 to 120 seconds and they want you to go like four seconds out hold for two seconds, four seconds back hold for two seconds. So it’s four to four to and I’ve in this session yesterday as my third session there completely forgot about it and the coach pulled me up on it he’s like, okay, four to and I was like, okay, yeah like that’s one of the fundamental things that they’ve got but I just wasn’t even thinking about it

and it made me think like with these drills it’s so easy or even with your stroke it’s so easy to just forget these things that sometimes you need this little bit of a prompt especially in the early days and so was my third session and it made me I guess have a bit more understanding for people when they’re swimming that they’re not gonna remember all these things straight away it takes time especially if I can forget something so basic is like the fundamental timing of the movement that I’m doing. Yeah, I think that’s a really good example I’m going through something similar at the moment doing some rehab for an injury and my sports physio has given me videos of how to properly execute each of the exercises you’d like me to do but I find it down now for five, six weeks I’m continually going back to the video to take another look to say, well, have I got the right body position? Am I using the right breathing technique?

Have I got the right speed of this drill? So these sorts of gym exercises or rehab exercises I think have a lot in common with the drills we do in the pool and I think showing a person once how to do it is great but it needs regular reinforcement and regular oversight to make sure it’s been done correctly. Yeah, yeah, completely agree. And for you going forwards is there any events you’ve got coming up that you or any that you’ve got in mind?

Well, Ultraman broke me. It’s fair to say so I’m currently taking a little bit of time off particularly the sort of longer endurance training there’s only so many eight hour bike rides that you can tolerate in a year I think so I’ve kind of got a pretty clear slate for the next few months but then next year I’ve got the Busso 100 which is the new Busselton race in May that replaces the 70.3

I’ve got the Sunny Coast 70.3 and the Nusa Triathlon and I’m gonna have a go at the Cape to Cape Mountain Bike Race in WA which was just held this past week so a year from now. Where’s that go from? So that starts, it’s down in the Southwest of WA it’s based around the Margaret River region and goes from Augusta up to dwelling up over four days. So. Right, it must have started just this. Yeah, good for a bit of variety. Distances aren’t that great. So aren’t that great, there’s mountain biking but sort of 40 to 50k a day over a lot of single track and a little bit of fly trial. Yeah, nice. Well, that sounds like you got a busy schedule ahead and I mean, I imagine it’s for me when I’m racing, I’ve got something to train for I find them a much better coach. Do you find something similar? Absolutely, yeah. I’m completely lost without a goal right now. My training tends to get a little bit creative and inconsistent but like I said, the one thing that stays constant

is the swim training. So, regardless of whether I’ve got a race coming or not I’ll still get to the pool at least two to maybe three times a week. Just to keep, it’s good maintenance. Just keeps all the joints moving and keeps that base level of fitness going. I found that with not being out of the pool for so much this year. Like I’ve, I don’t know I’ve probably haven’t been more injured than I have this year. And it’s just like, I think it’s so good for you. As you said, for your joints, for your general movement and strength through your whole body. And it just, it loosens you up so much. And so, yeah, just like back and neck and all this sort of stuff I’ve never had. But so I put that down to just really I’d never taken longer than about two weeks out of the pool since I was like 12, I reckon. So I’ve got to get back to it but it is such a good sport that you can do all the way. All the way into your 100th year, I reckon.

Like there’s, it’s just such a great sport. And I’m glad that it’s something that I enjoy and something that, you know, just continue to do because yeah, as you said, like with running, it’s a great exercise to do and it’s a lot of fun but it’s a lot harder on the joints. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve never been touched. We’ve never been injured swimming even with the volume of swimming that I do. I’m kind of lucky that my shoulders are quite robust. So that’s not an issue for me. But I have been injured when I don’t swim. So that lack of maintenance does lead to back injuries, joint pain, various other things. So for me, swimming is great maintenance and a good way to loosen up and relax and prepare for the other exercises that we do. Yeah, totally agree. And for those listening, what’s the best way to get in touch with you if they’d like to find out more about your coaching or any of those sorts of things? Yeah, we’ve got a very professional looking website

if I do say so myself, because I’ve prepared it. And that’s, people can find that at triaxcel.com.au. So that’s T-R-I-E-X-C-E-Y, try and excel. We also have a presence on Facebook and Instagram with that same tag, triaxel. Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for being on the podcast, John. I’ve really enjoyed it and good luck for those upcoming races. I need to book in something. I think it’s, there’s one open water swim that I’m going to book in soon when it opens, but yeah, it’s, you’ve sort of got the juices flowing when I think about swimming in Rotnest again and that kind of thing. It’s, yeah, I really would love to get fit. So I appreciate you being on the call. And yeah, thanks for being here. No problems, I’ve enjoyed it. And if you do come over for Rotnest, make sure you drop by and we’ll maybe even billet you at the house here and feed you up before the race. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, John. No worries, mate.

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

The post Preparing For An Ultraman Event with John McCann appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is an elite athlete who won an incredible 5 World Championships is paddle boarding and holds the course record for the Molokai to Ohau race in Hawaii. Won his first full Ironman series in 2018 and the Coolangatta Gold Ironman in 2019. Join us as Matt talks about his training sessions, visions and upcoming races.

02:48 Loving The Sport From The Getgo
04:35 Becoming A Tougher Competitor
06:47 What I Love About The Sport
09:30 The Ultimate Humility Teacher
11:57 Training Environment
14:14 Transition From Pool To Openwater
19:36 Favorite Swim Training Sessions
27:16 Upcoming Calendar Events
28:32 Train, Train, Train And Compete
32:43 What Sets You Apart
36:36 Winning The Coolangatta Gold
43:20 Visualization And Mental Imagery
46:13 Knowing The Purpose Of Drills

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So I talk about the sport as being the ultimate humility test. So the ultimate humility teacher. So you can be the best on the day and obviously lose the race or actually come fast by a long way, but despite being the best on the day. But so luck does play a part and even while I’m saying that, I’m saying luck doesn’t play a part because you’re always trying to teach yourself that you have control of your destiny. So for every race you go into, you go in there trying to do your best and worry about no one else, worry about your race plan. So specifically because on a six foot day on the Gold Coast, there are so many different ways to get out, come in that have different chances, different possibilities that vary 10%, 15%, but you need to take the majority chance to get the win. So you’re constantly evaluating odds and sometimes it doesn’t go your way and sometimes you have to be really OK with your decision that you made the right decisions.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. All right, welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Surf Ironman competitor Matt Bevelecqua. Matt, welcome to the podcast. So you’re, I mean, you’ve got a huge background in Surf Ironman. You won the Neutrogen Series in 2018 and five times Molokai to a Wahoo paddleboard champion and with the fastest crossing too. Is that right? I think I’ve got the three fastest times for that event. So tonight, don’t mind being out there in Hawaii. So it’s a good race. I love to do. And tell me about when you first started racing in the surf. Like, what was your upbringing like? Were you always around the water? Obviously in Tassie, that’s not always the case. It’s the beaches and the layout of the city and stuff. It’s the beach.

The really nice beaches are pretty remote. So I was lucky enough to have, you know, really supportive parents that took me down to the beach. And, you know, even in the most horrible days down there, it gets pretty cold even in summer. Yeah, it’s down in the beach and just had a love for the sport and had a love for the community down there at Clifton Beach Surf Club, which is actually the most southern surf club in Australia. And yeah, I never, well, I did a lot of football and things like that. But I just really enjoyed being on the beach and challenging myself in conditions and throwing myself out there, you know, when the seas got big and stuff like that. So, yeah, love the sport from the get go. Do you think it made you a tougher competitor being brought up in those cold conditions? I mean, compared to the softies up in Queensland, right? And we’ve just got the warm water all the time, you know? And I’ve probably feel a little bit the same way down here in Victoria, right?

Where it’s just even now the water is still so cold, but you see the kids out there. I see my kids going into the water and, you know, they don’t want to go in, you know, back back home until they’re freezing cold. So did that sort of help you? You reckon become a tougher competitor and get used to tough conditions? I think it’s a bit of both, right? So you obviously what you don’t what you don’t know can’t hurt you. So if you don’t know any better is you just don’t think it’s that bad. So, yeah, you see the kids talking or it has either just and even now. I’m like, oh, my God, I’m not going in there now because I know a lot better now. But I think what got me to where I’m now is that that love for the sport. So even even though I loved going in the water down there and training and getting out there in the snow, I still enjoy the sport, which was, you know, I think it was clear for even my parents when decision time came,

things like that, they’re like, you enjoy it a lot. You know, you love doing it down here and here is not fun. So, you know, when the going gets tough up there, you’re going to keep going. So I think if you can, if you see kids doing it tough in difficult situations in whatever sport or whatever thing they’re doing and they still kind of have a real love for it, still doing it with a smile on their face, maybe they’re getting fifth or sixth or last, you know, maybe that’s the difficult situation. But if they’ve got that love for it, it’s a really good indicator that you could have some sustained success. So I think that’s that’s what I’ve noticed the most is that love for the sport is never left. And I’m glad I made the decision I did to stick with, you know, serve. And what is it that you love about the sport? What attracted you to it? Question two, like people say, oh, why did you why did you start? Nethers, why did you, you know, keep going?

And like, you know, my initial answer is, yeah, I just love the beach. I love testing myself in conditions. But I think it’s a bit of everything, you know, coming from Tasmania, we had to travel a lot to go to different competitions. And when I got the opportunity to go to the Gold Coast or to even to Perth or to Sydney for road trips and things like that, there is nothing better than doing a three day carnival on the beach with, you know, some of the best competitors in the world, in Australia and being a little niffer, you know, challenging yourself in different conditions, different beaches all around Australia. And that’s what the sports all about is, you know, travel and mixing yourself amongst the best at a range of locations. So I think that that was more a progressive part of the love for it because you obviously like going to the beach initially, but the reason why I stuck with the sport is those reasons.

And that’s what the Nutri-Gene Ironman series represents. You know, you go around with the best 20 guys or 20 girls to some of the best locations in Australia. And then each each location offers different challenges. So it’s a beautiful sport. And I think that’s yeah, that’s why the love where the love was generated later on. Yeah, I mean, I think about why I why I still continue to swim. I like yourself started pretty, pretty early started, I don’t know, four or five, just like parents sort of threw me in, but still continue to swim today. And I couldn’t see myself not continuing to swim. And for me, it’s like it’s a combination of like you want to be good at something. And when you’re good at something, you tend to continue to do it because you’ve put a lot of work into it. And if it’s something that you generally just love, it’s it helps. But then there’s also that element of wanting to get better, enjoying the

like I love to train. I love the feeling of being exhausted or testing yourself in training. And then look, I’m probably a better trainer than I am a competitor. But yeah, there’s like there’s a whole host of things. It’s like you just sort of get started in something and then it builds in it and it builds and it sort of sounds like that’s that’s what happened for for you. And like, why did your parents get you into surf lifesaving? Were they originally sort of beach people or they did it themselves?

Not really. Like, you know, I think my mum did it a little bit, but not really. I think they were really good parents that they just threw me into everything. But I remember getting a little bit of taste of everything like I was, you know, tennis, like karate music, you know, playing musical instruments, just everything. So I think surf was just encompassed in that, which was, you know, just in Tassie, which is still a bit strange. But we had a lot of kids in our sport in our surf club down there. So I think that’s what attracted them to send me down there. But yeah, just a bit of a taste for everything, which is so crucial for a young athlete. I think everyone, everyone has a sport they’re probably naturally accustomed to and naturally have a, you know, attraction to as well. So I’m glad I got taste for everything because I definitely found a niche sport that I have a niche love for. Yeah. And which out of the sort of sports that out of the events that you’re doing,

what do you what’s your preference? What do you enjoy the most? Yeah, it’s a good question. So our sport’s so diverse. You know, we have our Australian Ironman Championship, which is amongst the national titles, and it’s a very short race. We have the endurance event, which is the Cooling Out of Gold, and that’s in four weeks time. Then we have the Nutrients Ironman Series, which is six rounds, six different locations, you know, and then Molokai, things like the World Powderboard Championship Hawaii. So there’s just so many different events in our sport. And I think what still is just I just love the challenge so much is the Nutrients Ironman Series. The Cooling Out of Gold is probably a close second, but there’s no comparison to when we have an uninterrupted year going to six different locations for the best in the world,

racing individually and just challenging yourself at really different locations and travelling around. So yeah, Nutrients Ironman Series is the best. And do you train with the guys who you’re racing against there? I’d say most of them are up on the Gold Coast or up in Queensland, right?

Already would be in Queensland, few in sunny coast, probably majority in Gold Coast and then Sydney and stuff, feel the rest.

It’s, yeah, I suppose when we come together, it’s, yeah, a majority of the Gold Coast. So we spread across the surf clubs, obviously. So I only train with, well, I actually have three other Nutrients Ironman I train with. But mostly there’s probably only one or two at each surf club. So you don’t actually train with them too often. We come together in our swim clubs, they’re a bit more condensed. So you see other surf clubs in your mornings during swimming. But yeah, very spread and, you know, definitely spread between the surf clubs. And what’s your, what’s your approach of like, obviously, you’ve got to train hard. You’ve got to work your arse off and the, you know, your fitness and all of that plays a part. But obviously, there’s also the elements of the surf, right? You’ve, some people will catch a wave, some people won’t. And you have those sort of sometimes lucky, lucky breaks with it. So how does that sort of play into, to your approach?

Or if you perhaps have a good or a bad result, which might be the result of, you know, out in the out in the surf and maybe a bit of luck. What’s, how does that sort of play into your thinking of the end result at the end of the day?

I talk about the sport as being the ultimate humility test. So the ultimate humility teacher. So you can be the best on the day and obviously lose, lose the race or actually come last by a long way, but just by being the best on the day. But so luck does play a part. And even while I’m saying that, I’m saying luck doesn’t play a part. Luck doesn’t play a part because you’re always trying to teach yourself that you have control of your destiny. So for every race you go into, you go in there trying to do your best and worry about no one else worry about your race plan. So specifically because on a six foot day on the Gold Coast, there are so many different ways to get out, come in that have different chances, different possibilities that vary 10%, 15% that you need to take the majority chance to get the win. So you’re constantly evaluating odds and sometimes it doesn’t go your way. And sometimes you have to be really OK with your decision

that you made the right decision. So to worry about other people is an avenue to really just worry too much and not succeed. So you really need to focus on yourself and back your decisions and pretend that luck doesn’t play a part. Yeah, that’s right. And speaking about not not being worried about other people, we’re talking just before the podcast about where you train, which is at Miami pool. And it’s just like a treasure trove of elite sports people there. With Olympians, with with like national finalists. And then you’ve got a whole bunch of triathletes up that way. And like surf, Ironman competitors as well. So can you talk a little bit about the environment that you’re you’re training in with your with your swimming and who’s there and sort of how that looks. It’s a really cool part of my program. So I’m with Northbeats, but obviously in the mornings on the Gold Coast, we all kind of mingle surf clubs and go to different squads.

So there’s squads at Bond, Griffith with surf athletes there as well as Miami, which is probably the biggest surf athlete squad. So we run Dennis Kothra’s old program and we have triathletes coming in. We’ve got, you know, guys like Alex Graham, David Morgan that the pool’s from inside of our squad. And then yes, our squad has, you know, Matt Pool, Corey Taylor, Joe Collins, you know, we’ve had them all. So we’re kind of progressing on with the same sessions that Dennis Kothra used to set Grand Hockey at Tom Fraser Homes, Dan Smith, all those guys. So it’s a pretty heavy program and coached by Raylene. We, yeah, flog ourselves day and day out. So we’ve got a nine lane pool of probably eight good swimmers in each lane and that’s a massive torture test. But it’s the way we get our majority of our aerobic training. So unlike triathlon, the swimming in our Ironman races is probably the heaviest weight, like the most important kind of thing.

The most duration and the most time out there. So we have to be basically pool swimmers. You know, we we we rival times in training at the pool to the pool guys, but they’re much more finesse and can obviously race in the pool. We can’t go much faster than what we actually train at. So we convert that to surf racing and surf swimming on Wednesdays and Saturday mornings when we do our Ironman sessions. And yeah, so those those pool swims are chaotic and really challenging. A lot of the people that I coach at a triathlete to open water swimmers in the common question I get is how often should I be in the open water compared to the pool and most of the elite guys like yourself? It’s like the fitness is really done in the pool. And then the open water stuff, it’s more just about the skills and the tactics and learning, particularly at the beach, right? We’re like where you should where your line should be and all that sort of stuff.

So how often are you training for your swimming? And then I guess the other the other events as well.

I’m doing four pool swims in the morning. And then Wednesday and Saturday morning, I do my Ironman sessions, which are two obviously surf swims, but no specific actual surf swim sessions.

And my thinking, when you’re obviously majority of your listeners are open water swimmers, a lot of their open water swimming is very flat, you know, for triathlon and for open water swimming in, you know, the Kauana Lake, things like that. So it’s it’s it’s not quite it’s it’s almost easier because you’re more buoyant, you got your wetsuit on sometimes, salt water, things like that. It’s not too much of a transition. So to put it in perspective, I only do two two surf swims, none are specific, but I actually train to swim in, you know, six foot surf, you know, where going up and over swells and you’ve got to learn to swim. It’s not even swimming. It’s it’s very weird hacking water polo stroke where you’re basically looking for the next runner to dive through dive through. It’s like a continuous porpoise, basically in massive, massive seas. So and even then so we don’t train a lot specifically for it. But when you have those skills, we see a lot of guys come

from the pool and they can jump in the surf. They can easily transfer it even into big choppy conditions. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, yeah, the pool is very if you can get the skills in there by doing different drills, different swim sets with pool and band, things like that, you can really transfer very easily. So we find it’s no problem. Has there ever been any situations where you found yourself, I guess, not out of your depth, but where you’ve gone, all right, this is this is testing. Well, what’s that? So just just cut out. And in what way, like in the surf, if I’ve done in the surf, yeah, like out in the out in the ocean where you’ve been out in big conditions.

Yeah, absolutely. We I mean, we kind of train for that because that’s where our sports the most exciting and I like to I like that our sport is, you know, engaging for the audience. So I love to make sure my skills are absolutely on point when I train. So but yeah, so last in February this year, we had a showroom partners actually put on a massive event and I’m in classic shadow next on our main classic. It’s called and there’s 20 grand on the line for the first place. And it was it’s so insanely big at service paradise. I remember just being like, I don’t normally get scared. I’ve done a lot of stuff in big surf and it was it was almost 10 foot plus and we’re going out and surf surf skis and and swimming and ball palling and just yeah, my partner was actually going out as well. And I was thinking she cannot go out there like that is so big. And it was a crazy day. And I remember thinking I’m definitely at my max here.

So yeah, yeah, I think that was last time. But it happens fairly often. You know, you really do test yourself. But it’s majority pretty safe, you know, as long as you’re doing the right things, you can test yourself to the limit without being unsafe. But yeah, that was February this year and good scare. What’s it’s is it scary being out there swimming or when you’re like on the ski? What’s the what’s the toughest one in those conditions?

Look, you would think it would be on the ski or board, but swimming sometimes can be really you can feel really vulnerable swimming because you just don’t have the flotation. Obviously, ski, you know, you’ve got to fight six. They’re six meter skis, 18 kilos. You’ve got to paddle in your hand, but you’ve got speed at your side. Whereas swimming, you can really get caught if you get caught at the end of a ripple, it’s kind of like getting caught under the waterfall. You know, you’re actually you can’t get out of there. You get caught at the wrong spot. You’re you’ll be held under for a long time, just with minimal chance of air. So yeah, the swimming I reckon the swimming I actually feel the most vulnerable, to be honest. But that’s what we’re trained for. So yeah, that’s that’s right. But and especially without like the fins or anything like that, like sometimes I’ll I live near near bowels and sometimes

I’ll go and like body surf and put the fins on and stuff. And like there’s no sweep there. Well, unless it’s really big, but it’s like it’s pretty it’s generally pretty safe. But even so, like without the fins, it’s like you’re you’re very much a victim to to what’s happening there. And you’ve just got to go with with what’s happening in the ocean. And yeah, that’s I guess that’s why I can feel like probably the toughest event if it’s big and challenging.

Those fins are awesome. You know, when it gets really big to go out there with fins on, you feel completely different. Like in in every way, you’ve just got your feet back. But when there’s when it’s big, it’s just air. You can’t even swim. So you really have to be skillful and know where to go with the current and get out of a bad situation. So yeah, because you’ve got no power, you literally just swimming in air. So yeah, that’s that’d be a lot of fun. Actually, I’d like to body set bells and some fins on. Yeah, I’ve had a few comments out there, but it’s it’s I don’t care. It’s it’s good. It’s good fun. And what about in terms of training wise with your swim sessions? Are there a couple of favourite sessions that you’ll do? Because I’m sure that you’re probably repeating the same sets fairly regularly. What are some of your favourites? Well, like you like you said before, I’m addicted to that feeling of improvement and training.

So I’m there to I’m there to get better. I’m there to swim well. So the week on a Monday morning, we do three hundreds. And sometimes we get up to 10 threes

and we’ll do say to send one to three, you know, three times, maybe in the last one, you know, max. And if I can do that session well and really fast, that’s probably my favourite session when I get really fit. And I can smash that session. That’s that’s probably my favourite session. On Friday mornings, where we’re feeling pretty flat, we do a 40 50 set, which is 16 50s on 45.

Is it? Yeah. 16 50s 45 and then 12 on 12 on 50. And then it’s 55. And every every like quarter one is fast. So 16 every fourth is fast 12 every three is fast. Eight every two is fast. And then you do the last four or max. So yeah, it’s a really nice progressive set that you can kind of squeeze every everything you’ve got to give out without kind of just it’s too much overload and you can’t get through a Friday morning session. So yeah, there’s there’s two for you that are kind of like, yeah. That’s good. I’ve heard. So I heard clearly actually he posted about that session a couple of years ago, said it was one of Dennis’s like go to sessions. And so we’ve we’ve done that like for the last couple of years. We’ve got at the DC special and it’s yeah, it’s a it’s a good one. Although when I like we’ve given it when we’ve done camps in Thailand and and in Hawaii and stuff. And it’s like we I don’t give it to give this one is that cycle.

But at the same session, but it’s good. It’s like it’s 2K. It’s not too hard. But it’s sort of like this gradual build, isn’t it? Where at the end, you just like you completely wrecked. But, you know, it doesn’t feel too hard because you get to ease into it. And yeah, a lot of the time when you fit, you think you can’t you can’t you don’t have a lot to give. But if you can just ease into it with that 1650s, by the time you get to four, you’ve actually, you know, really warmed up nicely. It’s a great warm up and you can actually develop show a bit of speed at the end and get a good get some good times out of your session and walk away going. And this is the best thing an athlete can walk away from. He’s got I feel I felt horrible at the start of that. But I finished pretty good and I did some good times. If kids or athletes can walk away with that feeling, it’s pretty empowering because you go, oh, yeah, you know,

you’ve dead in the race, but no, no, no, I’ve got more to give. You’ve always got more to give. You know, I never I never really know if I’m dead. So yeah, good, good one. I think that’s also kind of similar to that 10, 300 session. Like I really like those sessions where you get that gradual build like one build onto three, for example, because you can start out pretty easy. A little bit quicker and then quicker again. And then you might even find that your times are improving throughout the set if you weren’t feeling great in the beginning. But I find that so much better and more rewarding as the athlete because you give yourself that sense of accomplishment. Whereas if you’re doing a set, there might be like 10, 300s all at like threshold and you just blow up number three and it’s all downhill from there. You know, it’s kind of a bit a bit down on yourself after a session. So I do like those ones where you can.

It’s like this crescendo towards the end.

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I was really impressed when I used 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. So coming into coming into summer now, what’s what have you got on the calendar in terms of events and what you’re training for? Yes. So in four weeks, we’ve got the cooling out of gold. So that’s our in endurance race. It kind of kicks off the summer most most years last year. Unfortunately, we we didn’t get to race it. So and the previous year I won it. So I was probably one of the biggest achievements of my career winning that race. And the best ever to do it Allie Day wasn’t there. So he’ll be there in four weeks time. So I have to defend my title against him and really looking forward to a massive challenge, you know, and massive, massively motivated and really enjoying

training and a lot better than I was two years ago. So looking forward to that test kind of it’s going to hurt a lot that are ready for it. And then after that, our Nutri-Grain Ironman series kicks off. So it’s going to be a bit of a limited summer. I think we’ll probably just do two weekends and three rounds because we’ve just been a delayed start. Basically, we normally start racing about November for that series. So everything’s been pushed back. And then the Australian Ironman title in late March, which I really need to try and win. So I haven’t ever won one of those. Never won one of those. And that kind of ends our summer. We’ve also got the Shoreham Partners summer surf like series throughout that summer as well. So between the Gold, the Nutri-Grain series, the Shoreham Partners events and the Australian titles. So it’s a lot coming up over the next four months. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you’re going to be racing

close to every weekend by the sounds of it, right? It’s like, yeah, yeah, almost, yeah. And I mean, compared to winter, I’m guessing there’s like essentially there’s no competitions that you’re doing unless you’re traveling over to Hawaii or something which obviously hasn’t happened. So how do you how do you go with it? It’s like being a footy player, I guess, where you train, train, train. And then it’s just compete back to back. Yeah, it is. It is this summer. Last summer was not quite the same. We did the Nutri-Grain Ironman series over two weekends. And then Aussies, you know, so it was a really quiet summer. But yeah, when things are going, it’s on. So, yeah, you have a big off-season period and then your race, race, race. But normally, yeah, once once Aussies is done, kind of March, April, I can have maybe four weeks off. And then I’m 10 weeks out from July, July 30th, which is normally the board Molokai. So, you know, that’s 52 Ks.

It’s a five hour board paddle race. So I really need to do some long distance stuff for that. And so it’s it’s almost a continuous year. But obviously had kind of a nice break now. So I did five board paddle world championships in a row. And then so I didn’t really have a break for five years. And then I was actually going to have a break last year anyway. And then it was cancelled. So, yeah, it was one of those things. And I had a two year break now from the race. So I came to get back there and start getting back to normal and putting some back to back years together. Yeah, that’d be that’d be good. And what do you think sort of sets you apart with the the board paddle, like in that race, having perhaps the top three times? So what do you think you’ve you’ve got over everyone else? It’s sort of giving you that advantage. Yeah, great question. And I don’t really have an answer for you. Board paddling for me has just come.

I’ve always been a pretty natural board paddler on the on the big clubby boards when I was a kid lying down on the nymph boards, not so much like I didn’t even win races in Tasmania or anything until I was, you know, much, much older, like 16, 17, used to get flogged in juniors. And I’m and yeah. So I’ve got incredibly flexible hand strings, like even cold. I can go almost put my wrist to the floor with straight legs. So little things like that are obviously like maybe just naturally talented in genetics wise, but training for that race. You know, I just enjoy being like I told you, I enjoy being out in the ocean. There is nothing more fun than I enjoy going downwind in massive, like 10 foot swells and a huge downwind on those boards. It’s it’s like it’s like continuously surfing for like as long as you want to go for. So yeah, I love I love doing it. So when I go out, when I train the preparation for that race,

I’m probably doing more hours than anyone else. And that helps obviously for competing. And yeah, when we get over there, it’s just awesome. You know, you’re out in the middle of the ocean. You can’t even see land or anything or anyone like and you just paddle downwind and practice catching these swells for like five hours. And that’s a race, you know, it’s like nothing else in the world. And it can get pretty big. You know, open ocean seas in off Hawaii in those winds, you know, the faces of the waves are pretty massive. And you can you can get down and you can get some serious speed. So yeah, just a love for it, mate. That’s that’s another underlong tone here. Yeah, that’s awesome. And are you are you practicing that on the Goldie? Like are you driving up north and then going down on the right days? Or are you just going out from the surf club? Yeah, absolutely. That’s it. So when it’s flat, obviously I just go off the surf club.

There’s no point driving anywhere. But every chance I get that there’s wind, I’ll go down the coast. There’s a good paddle I like from because Brunswick and the Byron stretch before tweed, cool and gutter. So just just before the New South Wales border, it’s a lot more open to the southerly. So drive down to say Brunswick or Byron and then paddle back from Byron all the way to basically tweed or just to Kingscliff. And yeah, right. So it’s it’s shark highway out there because there’s no there’s no points that shelter you. So in the Gold Coast here, it’s a big bay where sheltered by tweed. So the sharks kind of, you know, they stay out to sea and run up and down the coast and it’s wearing kind of a protected bay. But that’s why Byron and stuff get them because they’re out there. So protect non-protector from the wind and I’m protection for everything else. And great, great paddlebacks, you know, we get dropped and fly back.

And it’s a bit very similar to Hawaii. But on the Gold Coast here, it’s it’s quite flat during during winter. So great open water swimming weather and things like that. But yeah, you’ve got to get out there when the wind’s out there. Mm, I saw a video on YouTube of two guys that they foiled from, is it, I don’t know, not main beach, but like sort of the top just before Strati like fall from there all the way down to like surf as I think it was. I was like, like, it’s not really something you can do that often around here. But yeah, with the wind and that kind of thing, it’s good conditions for it. Yeah, like the northerly is good. So it’s a north wind that’s going the other way. So you could start at Seaway and paddle all the way over to Snapper if you wanted to. That’s that’s about maybe twenty seven K or so. And at times you’d be a long way out to see because like I told you the Gold Coast is a bay, but that would be like, you know,

guys like Kyle and you are saying from Hawaii could do that. It’s a great opportunity here on the Gold Coast is pretty cool, pretty cool spot. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what about what about with the cool and get a gold? So that’s a huge event. And it’s like it’s really well, well known, really well publicised, particularly up on the Gold Coast, but I think even across Australia, like everyone’s heard of the cool and get a gold. How is that for you coming in winning that event? Yeah, yeah, it’s just crazy. Growing up in Tasmania, I remember watching the movie just with my little brother and my dad and the couch back home. And I remember I was so pumped to do it. The minute I was old enough to do the under nineteen event I was in I was like 16 and went over and did it. And I got six, which is pretty cool. And I just I was so stoked with that result. I was like, you know, blew my parents away. They were like, whoa, you know, only five of these mainlanders beat you

because I could compete in it a bit better than the short stuff because it was just a long time out there on the ski, a long time out there on the board and I can train for that in Tassie on the Gold Coast here. If you throw a 14 year old Tasmanian against Queenslander in four foot surf, you know, they’re like, what is what is this beach? You know, what is this place? Even like Torquay, you know, it’s a protected like little beach compared to the open Gold Coast. Like, yeah, that’s why Victorians again struggle as well. They don’t have like that unless you go on a port seal or something. You don’t have the comparable beaches. So I just had a love for it and I could easily do it when I was 19. And so then it was always a goal that I was like, I could probably achieve this if I before the things align and I can I can put the training together for it. So that’s what happened on that day. And just a day I’ll never forget was it was an insane race against one

of my best mates until the last kilometre and we had to have a sprint off. So. Oh, really? Yeah, it was just, yeah, it was a pretty crazy story. And I’m pretty keen to see what stories will come out of the next one because it’s going to be, yeah, a lot of guys would come to party and it’s going to be a tough, tough, another tough event. It makes me think of like some of the triathlon races I’ve seen where even like a half Ironman or Ironman events, which can spread across seven, eight or eight hours for for some of the pro guys. And if it comes down to a sprint, you just think, oh, my God, what are these guys got left in the tank after such a big day out? And I mean, the same thing with with Cooley was it’s just a it’s a long day out. Is it how many hours does it typically take for the for the race? So it’s about four hours is, you know, what the winters have come across that and yeah, so they we’d come through then and then, yeah,

some some guys would be out there for like eight hours or something sometimes. But yeah, so it’s it’s crazy. Like I always watch races like that and you see them sprint finish and you’re like, or, you know, any event you just like, how do they have anything left? And you just fueled on adrenaline. I remember trying to I remember just like literally gritting my teeth. You know, I was just so like desperate for anything I’d got and just hurting so much that I was just gritting my teeth so bad and like I had like a buck phone and stuff around my mouth and I was finishing the race. But just no idea, you know, just in such limits of pain. And I was thinking about it the other day because every every day you train, you’re trying to think of those moments and remember how much it’s going to hurt. So draw on draw on this opportunity at training to make that moment hurt a little less. And I was just, you know, we’ve been doing so many

times, I’ve been kind of delirious in the head a little bit, but I was thinking you don’t actually you train for those moments to hurt a little bit less, but they never do. You just keep getting faster. So I was because I’ve been, you know, improving a lot in the last few weeks and like kind of hurting the same and just thinking this is just this is a, you know, infinite challenge. You just you’re never going to hurt any any less. You just get faster. So I thought that was a funny thought I had the other day. But yeah, looking forward to it anyway. I reckon, yeah, it’s is that something that you’re thinking about in training a lot is that you’re visualising yourself racing, maybe like the last part of the race where you might be head to head with someone or, you know, seeing yourself on the start line is that something that you’ve done before or what you continue to do? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think visualisation and mental imagery for racing and training is just so

crucial. It’s really, really important. Even to the point where if you watch a lot of race footage, it’s kind of like the same because your subconscious takes on a lot of and that’s why I watch your videos is because your subconscious takes on a lot of the technique that you’re watching. You might not even notice it. You know, you might be talking through specific skill skills that you focus on, but just watching it, your body takes on so much of that knowledge. And yeah, so when I’m training, obviously picturing exact moments. If I do good things at training. So always I’m learning, you know, especially in the surf, just the oceans are infinite teacher. So I’ll remember those moments and drum it into my mind. And I’ll think, think through what I did, think through what I did so that you’d never forget it. You don’t just experience it in the moment and then forget it. You go, that felt good. I’ll, you know, I’ll remember that just think through it again.

And it’s almost to the point where those reflections after training is so crucial so that when it comes to race day and you’re sitting on the couch the morning of your race, you can just sit there and close your eyes and just picture all the, all those decisions that you’ve committed to. And all those things you want to do, you can really think to see them clearly and then enact them a lot easier when you race. And after training, you said you reflect, you reflect on the session a lot of times, are you doing that just while you’re having a coffee or having breakfast or you’re writing this stuff down? What’s your approach to it? Yeah, I do have a journal like all that. I’m very imperfect. I think if I was my perfect self, I would definitely be writing down every thought in a good journal, having a journal every year. But I’ve got kind of a really big book that for big races I make notes about and I definitely don’t do it after every training, which I should.

But yeah, after big moments and race preparation. So for the for the gold coming up, I wrote down notes for my preparation for 2019 because obviously it worked out right. So just the when what they had a massage nutrition, nutrition moments that I stuffed up nutrition that went well, things like that. But yeah, I think for listeners, you know, if you can write down notes, you have a diary for each year and you can write down, you know, some things that went well at each session or things you’ve been focusing on. It’s just so good, not even for revision, not even for revision at the ends of the year, it’s just for that, you know, reiteration in your head and that reflection, that reflective help. So yeah, it consolidates your thoughts, doesn’t it? I think of like, I don’t really sort of write about that stuff anymore. But when I was a teenager, you would keep a log book and write down like the main set and how we felt and that kind of thing.

And I probably use it more these days is more like when we were running camps for some like 2019, 2020, I’d at the end of each camp, I’d write down what what went well, what we can improve and just like, yeah, and just get it out on paper and then I can either look back at it or I just I remember it a lot better once I’ve written it down. And it’s kind of like when you for me, it’s been coaching. It’s like when I coach swimmers on their their stroke, I learn that a lot better when you’re teaching someone else as opposed to me just doing it. And yeah, it’s just that that next level of, I guess, taking things on board or learning them. Absolutely. And I was kind of I was intrigued into how how your coaching had kind of changed. So I scrolled to the bottom of your Instagram and watched like different a few other videos and just like even then I could see how much it’s progressed. Like you can you can just learn so much from analyzing where you were to where

you’re at and it’s just so motivational. But yeah, I could see that like you’ve done you’ve done well to improve how you coach as well. So like, yeah, it’s so yeah, it’s so so important to that reflection. And it’s it’s it’s a bit fickle and annoying. Sometimes you’re obviously so dead and you’re worrying about nutrition, but the key it’s a key part because that visualization, you want when you come up to a race, you want something easy that you can just lean on for just mental fortitude, a bit of positivity. You know, you’re going up to a big test, but that visualization is so easy. If you just got these notes, right, you know, normally for me, it’s a lot of swimming based stuff because it’s it’s my it’s probably my weakest leg, it’s just improved so much over the last few years. But I’m always always trying to work to improve it because yeah, it’s like I said, it’s the most important leg. So yeah, I just want to tick off those dot points.

You know, focus on that catch, you know, head up through the break, you know, lengthen out once you’re out of the back, like just little things. It’s not even too complex, but yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s interesting hearing you say like you watch the video of someone swimming and then you can almost internalize that and swim like them. And I like I love doing that. Like obviously, we’ve got the footage of Dan Smith, which you’ve seen. And he’s just he’s a he’s a bit of he’s quite unique with his stroke. He’s just so perfect and long. And when I’m doing some stroke count stuff in training, that’s really easy. I’ll try and picture myself like swimming like him. And then I’m picking up the pace a bit like my stroke is I’m not going to sustain that kind of style. So I’ll sort of switch to someone else like probably a bit more like Katie Lubecky with that more loping sort of style. But it’s exactly right. You can just picture picture who you’re trying to swim like.

And then you can really start to incorporate that into your into your own stroke. Yeah, because each person is different, each each like your different as well. So you can kind of, yeah, change it up for when whatever speeds you’re at. And and yeah, like I remember Dan Smith. I mean, so with Dan Smith, Dennis Cottrell always used to have a chat with me and another surf map pool after each session. And, you know, we’d be talking about Haki going into the his last Olympic trial and things like that. And he said, oh, if I could combine Dan Smith stroke with Haki’s work ethic, Haki just was never outworked. He goes, I’d have the perfect summa. You know, he just he loved he just loved Dan’s stroke. He just on it. He always used to use him as an example. So yeah, he’s he’s pretty amazing that that hundred. And that the Iron Man swim as well. You know, that flat water swim. Yeah, that was just incredible to watch.

I was kind of mesmerized by that. And with your own swimming over the last few few years, what what sort of what are some of those things that you focused on and how had you approached it over the last like five years or so? Yeah, it’s it’s been it’s been an incredible ride. So when I left Tassie at 18, 19, you know, my my surfs, my swimming was, you know, pretty terrible. I just was never naturally talented at it. Even when I left home at 19, I never it was even wasn’t even in the Iron Man series. It took me like two or three years before I could even break in. Let alone start to be competitive. So yeah, it’s come a long, long way. And I think I don’t I’m not exactly textbook. I’m not a completely dedicated athlete. Like I said, doing reflections every session or focusing on a variety of things. I’m a bit of a hacker and I just work really hard. But at the very minimum, I’m always just thinking, especially on easy swimming, just little things, you know, like keep hard and even

I don’t even want to say what I’m supposed to. But, you know, just high high elbows, maybe straighten your arms. So I change a lot during my swimming. Like you said, when you’re trying to fix that on dance, miss stroke for easy swimming and then maybe Katie that’s Ledekis for hard swimming. Just always thinking and always never switching off and just going through the motions when I’m doing drills. You know, when I’m doing one arm, you know, one arm swim, one arm drills, my hands by my side and I can I can breathe what we call uncle. So on the other side, not under your stroke arm. And it’s a very balanced rotation now that I can do for that drill. Things like catch up and six kick holds, you know, with your elbow high and then reaching out, things like those drills I used to do and just go through the motions early, but I focused on them so hard that now they’re a real strength. I can do them really efficiently and strong.

And I think that they’ve helped my swimming come a long way. And I can see a lot of hacking surf swimmers, young kids coming through. And I say, you know, work on that one drill, you know, put your hand by your side and rotate and breathe the other side. And they go, I can’t do that. It’s really hard. And yeah, it’s hard. But that’s why because you need to do it to improve your swimming. So those drills I focused on, I never switch off when I’m doing easy swimming, hack a lot when I’m doing the hard swimming. But yeah, I think they’re just always open to learning as well. You’re there to you’re there to improve your swimming. And swimming is a finess thing. It’s the same as very similar to kayaking and surf ski paddling. If you if your techniques off, it’s just not going to happen. You can be the hardest guy in the room. It’s just not going to get you there. So really, really try and focus on improving whenever I can do on the ease

and stuff in those drills. Yeah, that’s it’s so good to hear. Because I mean, I think back to when I was young, I would do drills, but it didn’t really know what the point behind them was. And it’s easy just to roll through it. You know, you can do a few hundred meters of drills and you’ve done it. But if you haven’t focused on it or you haven’t used it to help improve your stroke, well, it’s no wonder like you just you’re just going through the motions. So I think what I’ve tried to do with my coaching is to explain the drills and the purpose behind them and how that relates to your stroke. Because I find there’s a disconnect there. And look, I get it. If you’re a squad coach and you’ve got if you’ve got nine lanes of swimmers across the pool, right, you’re not going to be able to go into too much detail with with things. And we run small group clinics of like six people. And so we have lots of time to explain the stuff.

And that’s what I try and do with the videos. So it’s, yeah, bridging that gap. And then when people do a drill and they see a result and improve their stroke, it’s like, OK, there is a purpose to drills. But yeah, you don’t need to do a whole session of them because I know what it’s like, you know, you just want to I just want to get fit. I just love that feeling there of a hard session. But also your technique is so important. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to to improve it. Yeah. Dennis used to Dennis used to pull us aside every now and then. You know, it was every three sessions. I don’t even think he’d say a cue, but he would stop he would stop everyone and he’d walk up and down the pool doing, you know, this catch and then he’d walk himself along a few steps. It’s the catch, you know, and he’d be so that was what he’s focused on. And so did you know, just just twiggy every few sessions to go, yeah, OK,

I need to focus on this drill. You know, it’s not there for just shitting giggles at some is a purpose to it. And it really focuses on a part of the stroke that you can change. When he’s swimming, it’s like even doing easy swimming, you’re not actually you can’t specifically look at, you know, once one part of your stroke. It’s kind of hard. You’ve got everything moving together, whereas they utilize it and yeah, if you can do like to catch up and just think about how far how many how little strokes you can do. And I wish I took more notes because I reckon I’ve dropped, you know, 10, 10 strokes of 50 off my minimum stroke in even just the last five years. Yeah. Yeah. It still doesn’t look pretty, but I’m much more efficient than I was for years to go. I’m much more balanced because coming out of Tassie, I was just a huge big hook and left and then a flat right arm and just some other evened it a lot out.

It’s a great feeling. I love my swimming now because I’m so much more efficient back when I first left Tassie was the chore, you know, getting up in the morning is I didn’t want to go swimming and and now I got all my gear in my bag or snorkel. I just embrace the entire process and I did a post about it the other day. My weakness is definitely almost becoming a strength, you know, compared to the rest of the Ironman, my swimming is probably one of my best because a lot of the other guys are good at board and ski, but it’s becoming a strength. So if you really work on it and you go to go through those little skills, you can make it make it more of a love for you. And then you can really improve. Yeah. Yeah. Totally agree. If when you see those those little improvements, it’s it gives you that confidence and it gives you that love for for especially with with swimming, which can be such a frustration for people.

Yeah, it’s yeah, you need the finesse, you need that skill. And what in terms of strike count, like what are you when you’re doing just a minimum strike count 50, what are you doing? Yeah, I’ve been getting down to 24, 25 for when I’m really nice and warmed up. Yeah, right. We don’t actually focus on it too much. So that’s just mid session, you know, me having a good time. But yeah, when I’m feeling good and my stream line is not great either. I’m not going to the 15 or anything. That’s just, you know, past flags or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, 24, 25. And yeah, a lot, lot better than previously. Our system is we can do some good times, but we’re hackers, you know, it’s inefficient, but when it’s in the surf, we can we kind of slow it down a bit and it kind of works a bit better. But it’s good to know that, you know, I’m getting better stroke in the pool. Yeah, that’s I mean, that’s 24, 25 is really low.

That’s that’s that’s awesome. And I mean, when you’re swimming in the surf to an open water, you’re not going to look pretty. You just can’t physically do it when there’s surf like you’re swimming in. So but it is good to have that finesse in the pool. And then if you if it’s flat and it’s better conditions, you can use it otherwise you I think you take that better feel for the water into the ocean when you’ve got a hack a bit. You still have that better feel for the water that you develop in your pool sessions. Yeah, yeah, like, you know, barely arm strength, strong, Nick Sloman and we’ve got Ruben Reese at Miami. Those guys are really efficient in the pool. They just look incredible, especially Nick at the moment in the pool. Just so good. And even when it’s dropping the surf, he just he makes it look smooth. You know, it’s almost like the more power he has, the more hip control and power there in the kick.

He can just make a choppy situation look pretty small, but it looks pretty flat. So yeah, definitely every single like I told, like I was saying before, that it’s definitely transferable easily and everything I do in the pool. I know it’s going to be really efficient, really helpful in the surf. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you being on the podcast. And I know you want to talk too much about technique. But I think it’s yeah, we kind of got people are going to be laughing at me. But anyway, I listen to my coaches that yeah. And I’ve listened to you. So yeah, thanks for that. So awesome, awesome platform you have to help such such a massive variety of summits. So yeah, cheers for your help as well. I appreciate it. And I mean, like I saw you shared one of our videos on on Instagram. I think it was and I was like, that’s awesome because I’ve watched you in the surf Iron Man scene for a number of years because I’ve enjoyed watching that stuff.

And I had a whole season of surf Iron Man probably 10 years ago. But yeah, so I appreciate that. But I wish you all the best coming up for this season, particularly for the Cool and Gatta Gold. And thanks for sharing all this on the podcast. It’s it’s been great. And yeah, I love the the fire that you’ve got. It’s it’s great to see that. And yeah, it just transfers into someone who’s a very good competitor. So yeah, I wish you all the best for the season. Cheers. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post Keeping Your Cool In 10ft Surf with Matt Bevilacqua appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Alex from AB Physiology. Take a listen as Alex talks about the importance of breathing, share some breathing exercises and how we should prioritize exhale.

04:32 Strategies Used To Help People Stay Calm
06:44 Level OF Awareness Towards Breathing
09:39 Breathing Exercise
14:28 Breathing In A Highly Stressed Situation
16:16 Prioritize Your Exhale
19:40 CO2 Tolerance
29:59 Keep Your Mouth Shut And Slow Down

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It’s just about finding this calm and you have to calm in the storm is always your exhale. And if the one thing people can take from this podcast is prioritize your exhale because your inhale will come and it’s much more intuitive. 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 Alex from AB Physiology. Alex, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, man. So a swimmer that I’m coaching introduced me to you. So Alison, she said I’ve been doing some breathwork training with Alex and he’s really helped me improve my breathing in the pool in swimming and I think it’d be good for you to have a chat to him. So I reached out to you and we’re able to coordinate this and just sort of chatting before this podcast and just via email it sounds as though there’s a lot of crossover

from what you do and how you approach things to how I like to approach swimming, coaching and working with people. So for those listening to the podcast, what’s your what’s your background and how would you describe what you do? So technically I’m a clinical exercise physiologist. I removed the exercise part from my brand as AB Physiology and I did that because most people would get fixated on that first word and then conflate myself with glorified personal trainers or stratification in coaches. And I went to university for an undergraduate degree in exercise science. I did a miscellaneous unit then study neuroscience and then got a clinical master’s degree in physiology. So I wanted to try and separate that and a lot of what I do now

on the outside doesn’t quite look like the traditional thought of exercise. So I’m a clinical physiologist and the way I view this job is we sit in the pocket between the highly objective physical practices of like physiotherapy and osteopathy in the traditional senses and the more subjective psychological practices of behavior change because as a physiologist my primary tool to help an individual achieve their health and performance outcomes is behavior change. And a lot of people I’ve found live on one side of this. They are either highly objective or highly subjective and I don’t like to talk to each other very much. So I’ve tried to sit in this middle pocket and I was very fortunate for a few years I was running a team of clinical psychologists and physiotherapists with a physiologist at myself. I was heading up a team there working with our veterans and it was a really really enlightening experience and extremely

helpful as a practitioner as I got to play in a team and getting that team to run smoothly was my responsibility and it was difficult because in health that is difficult. Multiple practitioners working together can cause problems. I was fortunate to have a fantastic team around me and I got to grow so much as a practitioner and when I finished there that’s when I branched off and I started doing my own thing. I do lots with breathing mostly with MMA fighters in terms of athletes and jujitsu due to my background in jujitsu and I also work with those who are ill whether it’s PTSD, anxiety, depression or with people on the NDIS. I work with everyday people who just want to get better at managing stress and I’ve kind of over these years funneled it down to being like a stress and adaption specialist whether it’s physical or mental stress there are ways we can learn to adapt and overcome these things to give ourselves a

better chance to succeed and that’s where I come in. Use your physiology to your advantage. And that stress you’re talking about a lot of people that I work with particularly those that are new to swimming they encounter that when they either first start swimming there’s that panic of like you’re in the water it’s an unfamiliar environment and the stress levels rise particularly for open water swimming and in a race environment where there could be hundreds or thousands of other people around and that really can sort of set people on edge so I think that would be a good thing to maybe dive into to first is what are some of the strategies that you use with the people you work with to help them stay calm in those situations? I almost always start off by trying to paint a picture around stress that the person can understand so communication and language is really really important particularly when people are vulnerable or you’re talking about

situations where they’re going to feel vulnerable so and the more I can get someone to understand what we’re trying to achieve from a physiological standpoint the better so I try and narrow everything or bring everything back to this concept of stress when it’s a mental health point of view or an emotional point of view all the names we have like anxiety depression PTSD all these different things they’re all create a physiological stress response under the hood so under our skin things start happening and they mirror what happens when we’re physically stressed if you take someone having a panic attack and you took their vitals it would look very similar to someone who’s exercising because the person who’s exercising has the context of them moving their body they have this higher demand of themselves so I narrow all these broad things down to stress and what happens when we’re stressed our heart rate goes up our blood pressure goes up our arousal goes up our breathing rate goes up

our sense perception goes up and of all those things one of them we can actually tap into

one of them we have we can exert direct control on and that is our breathing so I kind of use breathing and stress is this analogy of an explosion and how in a combustion engine that tiny little explosion is contained controlled and drives everything so our car can go forward if that explosion wasn’t contained the car would simply blow up human beings are combustion engines and stress is our tool or our driving force but if it gets out of hands we all kind of know what happens then it’s a good analogy I like that one and so what do you find when

what do you find I guess either the level of awareness of people’s breathing is when they first come to you for the for the general person is it something that they’ve typically never really considered yes and it’s often upside down it’s upside down in a sense if I get them to place a flat palm on their chest and a flat palm on their belly and take a quick full breath in their top hand will rise and their belly will hollow out okay so they’re lifting their chest their stomach’s pulling in and that is literally upside down in the sense that when we inhale our diaphragm is supposed to move downwards our ribs flare out and we have this expansiveness of building from the bottom to the top so the first thing I often find is they haven’t taken a proper breath in recent memory or if ever and once they take maybe 10 of these they immediately feel a difference in themselves they feel calmer they get lightheaded just because

mindless breathing will get you through your entire life but that doesn’t mean you should do it and they’re often quite people are often closed off to speaking about breathing or changing their breathing because they’re like I’ve been breathing my whole life and I’m still here like what are you gonna do to those people I say you can also drink a bottle of vodka a day for 30 years and live doesn’t mean you should and they often listen a little better after that but yes it’s literally upside down so getting that bottom-up expansion is where I have to start because we need to build this primary foundation which utilizes our lungs in the way they’re supposed to be used because they’re essentially giant wet sponges hanging in a cave and all that blood sits at the bottom of our lungs and if you’re only heaving from your chest and your upper thoracic

we’re really tipping the cup out 20% filling it up tipping it out 20% filling it up so there’s always quote unquote dirty air because we aren’t cinching our waist squeezing that air out to allow that next breath to spring in so yeah that’s probably where I start yeah and it’s I mean I’d never really heard of it or considered it until I went to a it’s like a surfing breath training course with a guy named Baldwin in Newcastle yeah and I think he’s up on the Gold Coast actually where you are so yeah and he was talking about diaphragmatic breathing and he went through some exercises to help us start to develop that and yeah that was a couple years ago but I’ve never really heard of it or considered it before then and what are some let’s say one exercise that you might take someone through to just begin to learn to breathe from their diaphragm diaphragmatic breathing is one of those funny ones in the sense that it’s always

working if it wasn’t working you wouldn’t be breathing like it is the primary movement it is the primary job it’s just sometimes it gets clouded by our use of accessory muscles so simply placing two palms either on the side of your belly button so like on your oblique kind of area or making a little C grip with your hands and cupping the bottom of your ribs trying to set your shoulders down and find this elongated posture and then trying to inhale and only focus on your ribs expanding outwards is a really easy place to start and when what’s more important is once you felt your ribs flare out that’s one thing but as you’ll find that over this podcast if I get my point across that I want to you’re exhaling is everything exhales the goal and that’s when I should come back together since our ways as you can see in that video my ribs really flare open and more importantly they’re almost accordion back together doing 15 or 20 of

those while you’re sitting by the pool or before you start to go anywhere and starting to feel this very two-dimensional idea although breathing is very very three-dimensional by just simply focusing on this lateral expansion this lateral movement this is where most people are restricted particularly for looking at swimmers or triathletes who have limited overhead range and they often feel really tight through their side body just starting to open that up and you mentioned in your email and it’s very true for breathing and everything really it’s a balance of relaxed and active movements mostly when they’re breathing just too stiff all the outside superficial stuff needs to be soft you need to feel this expansion grow and build from the inside and that’s why I said a sponge before as well because if you imagine our lungs as balloons balloons are flimsy and easy to collapse a sponge soaked full of air

those little air pockets are early they’re backed on top of each other and they create this giant surface area like if you were to flatten our lungs out for gas exchange just the same size as the tennis court right but if we aren’t fully expanding and fully contracting we aren’t letting air inflate all of those and we aren’t using that inherent force we can produce and actually breathe like most people struggle to breathe at the tiniest of weights on their chest yet I’ll work with fighters next door and myself and we have to try and find a breath or someone’s trying to ties into in half like a pretzel we can’t be in a perfect you know perfectly stacked pelvic and rib position all the time we have to be able to breathe in compromised positions as well and if you can’t breathe sitting down and you can’t feel that expansion sitting still or laying down for you to expect your body to find that kind of space and

utilize this gas exchange efficiently under pressure or stress whether it’s physical emotional how do we do that so that’s why everything starts seated everything starts calm and we build our way to more and more challenging things such as breathing through your nose and going for a walk and trying to breathe in for four and out for four while you walk and think Jesus that’s difficult yeah I like that approach have a similar approach when it comes to people going from being a pool swimmer and they want to learn to swim open water so just start with the most basic the easiest possible version of that and then progressively we can just expand what our comfort zone with it so if you know if I couldn’t be there with them it’s like well all right find somewhere that’s flat it’s safer in the open water but you’re swimming just along the shore and then we can maybe go a little bit further out and then we

can start to swim in conditions where it’s not flat there might be a little bit of wind chop and that sort of thing it’s like just start with the easiest possible version and go from there and I mean in terms of breathing like with jujitsu right it’s want to be it’s probably the the number one sport where you’re probably limited with your with your ability to breathe but it’s it’s so important when you’re in any of the sort of submissions and you look at someone like uh Volkanovsky right the recent UFC like he got out of those two um that I’m not too familiar with jujitsu terms but he managed to breathe his way through it and and escape these these two submissions and it was it was incredible that he that he got out of it so in a high stress situation like that and I’m sure you’re putting yourselves in yourself in those daily um what do what are you sort of thinking about or working towards when you

find yourself in those sort of situations it’s an grace you mentioned it on a recent Joe Rogan podcast and it’s what I tell everyone when it comes to the performance element of breathing and breathing under stress is like you need to find your exhale people skip straight to the inhale they start grasping at the air like that causes you to panic and if we’re like inflating like that and we’ve got this pressure in our head that makes it worse so when I’m in a very deep problem I’m just thinking about staying calm so I’m thinking about slowly exhaling I keep my tongue firm to the roof of my mouth I keep my shoulders and ears all shrugged up so because chokes like what Volkanovsky was in the guillotine in the triangle they don’t cut off your airways they cut off the blood supply to your brain it’s not a choke across the front of your throat it’s a choke across the side of your neck we’re trying to turn off the carotid arteries

that makes you go unconscious I don’t know what he was doing like he was his training partner for the tough season he was on Craig Jones as an Australian grappler initially from Adelaide in Melbourne who now lives in Austin Texas he’s one of the best guys in the world so he was beating up Volkanovsky like every day for months and he’s one of the greatest grapplers who came from the former greatest grappling team so it’s more of a testament to Craig Jones and what he would have been putting Volkanovsky through and also Volkanovsky’s mindset the dudes of Savage and he willed his way through that in a way that will put him in the history books for that reason and it’s just about finding this calm and I think you have to the calm in the storm is always your exhale and if the one thing people can take from this podcast is prioritise your exhale because your inhale will come and it’s much more intuitive

for example if you sit up tall right now and exhale out your nose humming until you’ve squeezed all the air out it’s a really gentle hum that only you can hear if you squeeze every little drop of the air with that hum then this relaxed your belly your stomach should pop back out again and it’ll initiate the inhale and then you can keep driving it up from there

that’s what that’s the anchor the anchor is breathe the air out let it come in breathe the air out let it come in we know how to inhale we’ve prioritised it our entire life we have this oxygen bias culturally carbon dioxide has the worst PR and marketing some of all the major gases if you turned on the news or the internet you think it was killing everything but it’s also what trees need to breathe and if we didn’t have carbon dioxide in our blood the oxygen would never get off of our red blood cells we need these opposing forces and like we were mentioning like he was mentioning this morning inhale dominance is a problem balance is in the middle but to find the middle you’ve got to explore fully the other side and because with triathletes and swimmers there is this obvious inhale dominance the that’s the thing that allison got to was that learning how to cinch her midsection and squeeze the air out similar to what i was saying before with that humming and trying to squeeze every

drop out and then let go and feel your ribs kind of pop and like with your swimming effortless swimming effortless breathing begins with really focused efforts you don’t just jump in the pool and be like i’m going to do it effortlessly now and you just swim like no there’s very specific things you touch on that you have to first grasp and hold on too tightly to understand and then you learn slowly over time i can let go and i need 10% of my focus to achieve what you used to take 80% of my focus that’s how you find effortlessness so you find where you’ve got to relax where you’ve got to be tense and then you kind of dance with your breath you don’t fight it that’s what i tell MMA guys don’t fight your breath fight to do it across from you you have to dance with your breath it’s a give and take yeah it’s uh when i originally started effortless swimming it it was it was about that it’s like you know effortless swimming takes a lot of effort or a lot

of work to achieve and it’s that being able to manage yourself under pressure and and keep calm and and keep your breath calm while you’re exerting yourself at a very high level so it’s does take a lot of time and focus to get to that to get to that point and i guess that sort of almost answers the question i emailed you saying that recently a lot of swimmers have worked with have been having trouble breathing every so let’s say five strokes it’s like breathe you know one two three four five and they breathe on the other side and that’s only about five seconds apart yet a lot of swimmers tend to struggle and they can’t do more than 50 or 100 meters breathing every fifth stroke or sometimes we’ll go like six or seven and what without i guess sort of knowing uh without being a swimmer yourself what do you would you potentially put that down to because it’s not a fitness thing these people can run and ride forever

but i would imagine it’s something to do with their breathing when they’re swimming

i feel that the carbon dioxide tolerance will be playing a factor in this uh have you heard much of carbon dioxide tolerance a little bit but uh like to know more the concept was brought in front of me by brian mckenzie and rob wilson from shift the depth these guys from the states i did that out of breath course a few years ago and it really sparked my interest in the breathing even more because it was backed on top of a lot of training and performance and also at that point like seven years of yoga with breathing and mindfulness being a huge part of that philosophy so they kind of sparked my interest in this and then it was obviously built on my prior university education and clinical practice and our body’s ability to tolerate elevated carbon dioxide is a reflector of our bodies of our ability to tolerate stress through all sources now i remember doing a co2 tolerance test on a age level try out like a

Australian level of like traffic masters like 30 to 35 and her co2 tolerance score was super low like insanely low and i was thinking like that’s interesting because i knew it didn’t reflect fitness but i was also surprised i’m like you swim like there’s breath holding involved in swimming but if we’re kind if we swim and we’re just kind of having a controlled panic attack for you know however long you need to swim for people are incredibly resilient i come back to the i barely did the drink a bottle of vodka a day our body will adapt so improving our swimmer’s carbon dioxide tolerance i’m sorry an athlete’s carbon dioxide tolerance

maybe the first place i would start with someone who was struggling to say hold their breath or do you have them exhaling while they’re swimming are they holding they’re obviously exhaling with a bubble stream for those five strokes yeah we typically the way i’d usually want someone to breathe is uh they’ll take the breath and then they’ll have a light exhale through their nose and then just before they turn to get their breath in we want a full exhale from that from the nose um so that’s how we would normally want them to be yeah to be exhaling but not breathe out everything straight away which is another sort of problem that some people have because then they sort of run out of air while i’ve got three strokes or four strokes left yes and uh the co2 tolerance says that the the guys talking which is like this is essentially you take three tidal breaths in and out through your nose you inhale a fourth time and you time

your slowest most complete exhale without starting stopping or swat without stopping starting or swallowing and that’s how you test the co2 tolerance already you can see the connection with what you’re asking them to do and what the test is itself now i forget the numbers i guess again the shift-adapt guys on instagram have all this really good content to check out

most people will get under 30 seconds for a time to exhale and again that’s like trickling it out your nose going so slow you almost can’t even feel it leaving there’s a bunch of imagery and stuff you can do and obviously it’s a test so there’s like practice like repeating the test will make you better at it but i now know for myself my baseline is a minute 30 if i can’t exhale

one breath in a minute 30 that’s shorter than that i know i need to have a rest my nervous system is a bit fried my best is up close to two minutes for an exhale and that reflects a bunch of things co2 tolerance are pulmonary control like respiratory control like the ability to like just slightly open the valve the back of your throat and let that air trickle out so slowly that you can maintain that and almost you feel your body almost shrink and then curl almost in on itself when you’re very fatigued or very like carbon dioxide has come up that i think is what they are struggling with and improving their carbon dioxide tolerance would be the best place to start that’s that’s good and i mean it’s yeah when we’ve got these these five core principles of fast freestyle the very first one is is breathing and being able to breathe relaxed and we focus on that and it’s um it’s something that i think people are very willing to skip

over because they like you said i know how to breathe right it’s uh and i’m fine with it but there’s so much more to it like you’re mentioning and i mean for you when did you first start learning about about breathing and and then going down the rabbit hole of you know just really sort of expanding your knowledge on it and then training other people to become aware of it and to improve their breathing similar to what you were saying i started doing yoga because i worked at a coffee shop under a really well-known yoga studio and that the girls had always come in on their training and i was doing it they were learning how to be yoga instructors and i’d help them with their anatomy and physiology because i already had an undergraduate degree in exercise science so i’d help them out and one of the girls on her first class was like do you want to come to my first class you’ve never done yoga before so if i’m shit you won’t know and i was like sure and i’m walking out of it like floating out

of the other class and like wow i’ve never felt more relaxed looking back now it was the breathing more so than the movement but everyone catches on to the movement side of it first that’s when i first started being exposed to it and over the years i was more and more open to it because i’ve just done hundreds of hours of yoga so i started listening more to the philosophy and trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of what’s a bit more grounded in reality and what’s a little bit too often a willow end instead of just throwing the baby out of the bathwater like most people can tend to do with things and i got better and better at breathing and then when i started doing jujitsu six years ago you learn how to lose your breath there because when you’re a white belt you’re in an actual fight so it’s just like controlled spazzy panic attacks for like six to eight months you’ve never been more fatigued than after

your first round of lives aspiring in jujitsu doesn’t matter what sport you’ve done if you never fought another person it’s a whole different kettle of fish right and three years ago i went to the art of breath course by the shift of doubt guys and they really like the way i described what they did was they connected all these dots forming like i had these dots laid out from my understanding of physiology i had these dots laid out from training from yoga and they came along and they painted this beautiful picture as to where when i finished that one day course i was supremely confident i’d be able to teach it i wouldn’t be able to do the things that they could do in terms of their applied application this year to tolerance test but in terms of the theory of it it just on was like oh shit it was a very big oh shit moment from now i started applying it religiously to myself and i started telling my best mates who are uh so who got me into jujitsu

but calling him being like yeah i’ll learn some shit i can tell you and he’s a father of two full-time tradie trains when he can i accidentally tore his bicep he’s peck sorry completely off the bone four weeks ago so he’s currently in a rehab process but he’s a savage and i’ve been trickling in this nose breathing stuff bottom up carbon dioxide tolerance just whenever i could because i never would appreciate it and he he texted me recently saying that he had a bit of a head cold couldn’t breathe through his nose so he’s doing his runs mouth breathing and he could only drop his heart rate 30 beats in the minute post run without using his nose when he got his ability to nasal breathe properly back he can drop his heart rate 70 beats in a minute post run

so i got my mma fighters next door who have a minute between rounds they’re dropping at 60 beats

right so once i saw the power of the recovery element to this in that setting i was like oh geez and then when i started applying this to my mental health patients so patients with PTSD for example having worked with veterans previously and now working with a few other clients that have it from other sources their whole stress response is dysregulated and like i said the only thing we can tap into directly one to one is our breathing you can’t tell your heart to slow down you can’t ask your arousal to be more manageable and focused you cannot touch that stuff but you can touch your breath and i can drop my heart rate 20 beats at rest with one exhale and that’s this stress response we’re talking about and that’s way harder done when you’re moving or when you’re in the moment but it’s a reflection of this skill set that if you spend the time doing the breathing and your your athletes should pay attention to the

fact that that’s first i’m sure you put things in order for a reason the same way every word i’ve tried to use here is a word for a reason there’s a reason breathing is number one because if that’s shit everything else is shit then you’re just building capacity on dysfunction and the end of that race is an injury or not achieving your true potential whichever comes first and and for you what’s an insight into what how how you think about your breath within a day so i imagine you’re probably training jiu-jitsu most days you’re working with with clients most days what does what does a day in your life look like in terms of what you’re thinking about your your breath because i know for me personally right i coach swimming uh every day i’m working people on their technique and so when i’m in the water and i’m i’m swimming i’m always kind of going through these things in my in my head and i think i’m more highly

attuned to it because i am um coaching others and because it’s just what i do day to day so how does it look for you really similar because i listen to what i’m saying to people and i try and practice that’s what i preach most a lot of practitioners i find struggle to do that uh but i really really try and live what i’m asking people to do so i think get up in the morning have coffee i’ll sit on this i’ll sit on the front veranda and do just a little bit of breath work my partner and i do about 10 minutes to get a little time run and we just have our own little stuff we like to work through whether it’s like intuitive box breathing or i might do some yogi breathing techniques of over breathing we might play with grim Hof stuff there’s so many things to play with it’s like reps and sets of gym once you understand a bunch of things you can kind of tailor make your own workout but i also try to not lose it throughout the day

like i i just try and i’ll check in every now and then with this and i’m always breathing through my nose that’s the damn sure i don’t use my mouth unless i’m in a big problem

big problems or fighting black belts or people trying to kill me that’s when i’ll start chipping into my mouth but the same time when i start to my mouth i don’t want to disrupt the pattern i don’t want to go into that chest breathing breath and it’s all the things i’ve told you other things that are happening in the back of my head like find your exhale when i do strength training my mouth’s glows when i do my cardio my mouth’s glows like i run i use the ski erg the aerosol bikes the concept to rowing machines all of that stuff is nasal breathing to me because it’s all about building my capacity with my mouth shut i don’t need to be the fastest runner i don’t need to do any of those things i need to be able to step on to a mat stay calm and execute my goal which is to submit my opponent and by having that not caring about how fast i’m going in that ego check when it comes to those things my breath is the key focus because like i said it helps with everything

so my day is and then when i’m back in when i’m working with clients i’ll be queuing them as well and the simplest thing is just keep your mouth shut don’t just keep your mouth shut and slow down

that’s what i remind myself of all the time if i’m running and i’m starting to get a little bit heightened and too high and losing my composure i might do a big a few big breaths out my mouth and then get back to nasal breathing and i when i’m running i inhale for four steps and exhale for five steps right and that’s both in and out through my nose again date fast but it’s just the pace that i can find and by slowing down you get into the zone and like i was saying before the balance is in the middle somewhere you need to find the size of breath or the volume of in versus out to keep your output and your arousal lined up so a lot of people when they become too heartened and stressed they’re breathing like so their respiratory rates up here and their outputs here and they’re just this dysregulation when i was learning this shit i went the other way i was under breathing for the problem i was in and i could hold on to that for a while but then

it would hit me like a ton of bricks because and humans mostly overcorrect our first correction is almost always an overcorrection so i literally under breathed for the fighting i was doing so i’d roll about spa for four minutes and then the buzzword ring and i’d be like

shit and i have to try and get my breath back instead of finding where i needed to be and that’s what i think swimming in triathlon and triathletes have is that it’s just you your mind and the the the discipline that you are in yes you’re racing other people but if you can just like find in out in out for the what you need and i tell you it’s always exhale more once you find that you’re getting this happy point that allison might have mentioned to you where from figuring out that cinching exhale she noticed her heart rate had gone down her swimming speed had gone up and her stroke rate didn’t change right and that’s the epitome of efficiency because you’re going faster and everything’s getting easier so and that was just coming down again to that exhale focus and her being able to connect the dots with that last point you say oh if you trickle the air out and right before your body rolls at the breath in

forcefully expel the air that’s hard to do but once you found that with your coaching cues that all were like kind of all dots aligned and then you’ve just got this very happy lady who’s really enjoying her swimming now yeah that’s right um alex i really appreciate you being on the the podcast and for those listening who would perhaps like to get in touch with you to maybe work with you one on one or yeah learn more about what you’re doing what’s the best place for them to do that best place is head over to instagram ab underscore physiology on my website ab dash physiology dot com shoot me a message or an email i do zoom consults or face to face consults uh when it comes to the the breathwork specific things i’ve got like a set of protocols we run through there’s like an initial testing that gives us our first protocol which is like kind of the crawl before you can walk and i space them out about once every two to

four weeks depending on progression and once you’ve gone through the four to six protocols depending on what you want you’ve got all of these tools in your toolkit to create like i was saying before like a reps and set style thing with breathwork as well and it’s such a handy tool to have not only for performance in the moment but helping you recover and downshift between training sessions like those boys dropping their heart rate 50 to 70 beats in a minute back come on like if you can stretch that out over like you’ve got a three-day session and you can bring your heart rate down and you can stay in that rest digest and recover uh state the longer we’re in there the more chance of to kind of fill up our cup to go again so yeah through zoom face to face in the girl already i g on the website fantastic well alexa i appreciate it i’ve certainly learned a lot and and i really enjoy this sort of stuff because it’s easy i mean i find for me it’s easy to

forget about it because there’s so much going on but when you do come back to your breathing it really sort of simplifies things and it helps with everything else and i find this with swimming find this with surfing when i’m out there when it’s a bit bigger and um yeah and this stuff is uh is very valuable so thank you very much and uh i’ll make sure you’re all those links are in our show notes and we’ll um yeah take when the episode goes out so i appreciate it thanks for having me man really appreciate it thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

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