Effortless Swimming

Joining us in this episode is Trey St. John whom I have been working with for a couple of months. Trey recently joined a triathlon and couldn’t believe that he clocked in a sub-24 minute time. Join us as Trey talks about what he thinks contributed to this significant change.

00:47 Swimming Background
1:55 I Needed To Start Swimming
3:19 Watching Feedback Friday Videos
5:38 Fitness Is There But No Technique
6:03 I Really Wanted To Qualify
8:44 I Started Seeing Improvements
12:07 Using A Different Pair Goggles Right Before The Race
14:47 Consistency. Strength Work. Coaching
18:30 Using Bands
22:08 Providing Stroke Analysis Online
25:02 Awareness In The Water
25:22 Small Changes Can Make A Huge Impact
26:50 Preparing For Open Water Swimming
28:49 Open Water Sighting

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there’s no way that time is right. Because I had originally set a goal for 27 minutes and I was thinking there’s no way I’d swim in the sub 24, you know, on this race. Anyway, later at the end of the race, I looked at the results and realized that I had swam a 2345. 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 Trey St. John and we’ve been working together for the last

couple of months in the lead up to an exterior event that you recently did. You’ve had some pretty good improvements over the last few months with your swimming. I wanted to get you on the podcast to talk about that today. First of all, welcome. Can you give the listeners a little bit of a background on your swimming, on your racing and what’s happened in the last few months? Sure. Yeah, not a problem. So I can give you kind of a little bit of background on some of this, but so mainly I worked a desk job probably for about the last 15 years or so. I really haven’t done,

I wouldn’t say anything structured or, you know, mainly it was like two days a week if that running. And that was about the extent of the exercise. And then probably back in 2019, I had a friend who tried to convince me to do a triathlon with him. So I started that process,

started running a little more consistently, started to work on some structured plans. But, you know, for the, I guess the main part, I really only did any kind of major exercise, biking, running, sports, things like that back in middle school and high school. So really going into college and then most of my work career, I really have not been that involved, you know, heavily in a lot of sports. So anyway, you know, going into 2019 with my friend, trying to convince me to do this triathlon, I decided that one of the things I really needed to do was to also start swimming. So just to kind of give you a little bit of background on my swimming, I really, you know, I knew how to swim. But beyond that swimming, even just in a, you know, 25 meters in the pool was a challenge. So it was easy to get out of breath and, you know, feel uncomfortable. But I probably swam maybe one time every two months or so,

up until maybe a couple of months before the original event, which was going to be back in 2020, which obviously got canceled due to COVID at the last minute, it’s about three weeks out and they canceled the event. So around that time, I’d done a couple of open water swims

after doing some of the pool swimming, just trying to make sure that I could actually finish the race. And I would not have absolutely would have failed the open water swim part of it. There’s no question in my mind about that. So I realized that I was in trouble and that I really needed to do something, you know, big, make some big changes. So of course, my big change was starting to swim one time per week, which later proved to not be sufficient either. And one of the biggest things I will say though, is that I ran across your feedback Friday videos. And so I really started to focus on the feedback Friday videos and trying to understand a little bit better about, you know, where some of my areas were that I needed to improve on and swim it. And I made some pretty minor improvements. I feel like

one of the big things I did too was video every single swim. And so that way I could kind of compare to what you were saying on the feedback Friday videos versus, you know, what I had on my footage. And so basically every day when I would ride, I had your videos on repeat, you know, and that was how, you know, on the trainer, that was how I would, you know, try to train myself on some things. But I really do feel like probably one of the big things that helped me leading up to the last couple of months, probably starting in January before the race this year was I had a recommendation from a friend to do bands like dry land exercises. And so I did a lot of bands, a lot of strength work, just trying to build up my ability to, you know, not only have a little bit more mobility, but also on the strength side. And I actually started doing that between five and six days per week. And I was only swimming

one day a week, up until January of this year. And then I started swimming three days a week, three to four days a week, starting in January. Because even though before that I was swimming in one of my friend’s pools, it was only a 10 meter pool. And in November it got down to, let’s see, I guess, about 13 degrees Celsius. And so that was a little bit hilly for me. So I actually stopped swimming from November to January. And then in January, I joined a local YMCA and started swimming in one of their pools. It’s a 25 yard pool. So I was swimming, like I said, three, four days per week. I got to where, so in January, I was swimming somewhere around at 212 per 100 meter pace. If I don’t know that I could have finished a 1500, you know, 1.5 K swim, even in January. And so, but I do feel like the fitness was there, just I didn’t have enough of the structure and technique to be efficient. You know, a lot of it, I think even

finding out from you, some of it was kicking and some stroke related things as well. So anyway, starting from January through about the time that I hooked up with you on the training, I made some improvements, but it just really wasn’t fast enough for the goals that I wanted. I really wanted to qualify. That was one of the big pushes. I knew I could do it based on my bike and my run times, but I just knew my swimming was awful. And so I feel like I had a lot of the fitness in place from doing the bands, especially so many days a week. But I just didn’t have any of the experience or the technique. Interestingly enough, from watching your feedback Friday videos, I felt like I had a really good idea of what I needed to change. But then after working with you directly in the coaching side of it, I realized that there were actually some simple things that you were focused on that were very different from what I was trying to focus

on. And I feel a lot of it. Can I ask what they were? The things that you thought coming into working together that you should work on or at least straight away? I’m sure that some of the things really are issues that I probably will need to address that you and I will find out soon. But I think too, the way that you lay it out, it’s just very simple, right? It’s very specific on something very specific and simple that I need to focus on. So one of them being that I don’t have enough mobility in my feet. And so I’m kicking or I was kicking extremely hard. And interestingly enough, I did a kick set to determine that I had zero forward propulsion from kicking. So the harder I kick, the only thing I’m doing is wasting energy.

And so it was interesting to hear some of your videos and to learn from you about really it was more about balance and maintaining that streamline as opposed to trying to kick hard and get that forward progression. Because one of the other big things I was doing is I was bending my knees real heavily, bending big time, almost 90 degrees at the knee. And I noticed one day in one of my videos that when I did that, I actually stopped 100% on my forward momentum when I bent that knee like that. And so it’s like I’m swimming at a decent pace. I’ve been my knee at 90 degrees and I’d stop. And then I’d go to kick and I’d start moving forward again. And I’m sitting here thinking, why am I even kicking? So just some interesting things that I was able to find out on that. But yeah, I do feel like probably the two to three months leading up to the race, when you were really focused on some of my breathing and my arm

dropping and some of the real specific, I guess, easy but technique related things, I started to see much larger improvements. So while I was at 212 per 100 in January, I think I got down to somewhere around like 147, 148 somewhere in there, closer to around the time that you and I started doing the coaching. And then for the race, let’s see, what would that convert to for the speed that I was swimming? It was a,

so it was like right around a 136 per 100. So that means I probably shaved another, was that 10 to 12 seconds per 100 off just in two months, was some of the changes that you had me make right before. So, but I will be honest, so going into the race, I was a little bit concerned. I still felt like you and I had been talking about some of my breathing and my stroke and I felt like in open water that I don’t know if I wasn’t relaxed 100%, but I would go, I’d get to the point where my heart rate would really skyrocket. And I would start to not breathe properly. I think what I was probably doing is trying to push my head up too high and then I was thinking, trying to push with my arm. And so then I would show the race you’re talking about. Yeah, or even doing some of the open water swimming. Yeah, before the race. And so probably the two or three times doing open water swimming before the actual race,

I would choke on some of the water. And I know I sent you a message about that, you know, which was one of my biggest concerns. Hey, am I going to get in the middle of this race? Think that I’m moving at a pace that I want to move at and then have a major problem with some sort like that where, you know, potentially it impacts me or maybe not even finish the swim. So anyway, so you and I went through some of the things you thought I should change, then the Wednesday before the race, I had the opportunity to swim with an ex pro up there in the lake that we were going to do the race in. I felt pretty good, you know, everything. I worked on some of the sighting techniques that you told me about. I worked on some of the breathing techniques you told me about. And I felt pretty good about it. After the swim, I thought it was kind of funny, but I was swimming a much faster pace than I thought I was swimming at the

time that I was following the pro. But anyway, it made me feel a lot better about the race. So morning of the race or really actually on Wednesday, that same day, they said or made a change to the race and they said it was going to be a time trial as opposed to a mass start. And so that was unexpected. We thought it might happen just because of COVID regulations. But the last second they changed it. So I made the decision that since I wanted to be or have less people to pass on the bike, that I was going to try to be the first person in the water, whether that was a smart decision or not. I don’t know. I know that there were several people that, you know, ran me over after I first jumped in the water. But I do feel like it gave me a better position. But nonetheless, so that morning, I did line up and I got to be the first person in the water. So one of the things I did right before the race was I used a different pair of goggles that

I was having problems sighting because on the one stretch, it was about 750 meters from buoy to buoy. And so I was having problems sighting and being able to see all the way down to the far buoys last second switched my goggles as to which ones I was going to use during the race. So anyway, so I line up, I’m first person ready to go on the water thinking I’m a fool

for wanting to be the first person in. And so I go to jump in. The first thing that happened was my goggles fell off. So of course, I had to stop, put my goggles back on, took off again, realized after about four or five strokes that they were still full of water. So I had to dump the water out of them again, finally got them clean. And I was swimming and probably within about 15 seconds or so, I had three different swimmers go completely over the top of me.

So of course, that was a little unsettling, you know, just never having done an open water swim like that in a race. But probably I would say about 200 meters in or so is about when I finally convinced myself to calm down and focus on the techniques that you and I had been working on, you know, everything I’d trained on in the pool, all the open water training. And I finally got my heart rate to stabilize and everything went really well from that part forward. I really felt like I was, you know, doing a lot of the things you and I had talked about as far as high elbow and, you know, just trying to make sure I’m not looking at the sky that I’m looking horizontally across the water when I’m breathing and not dropping my arm too much and all that. And so I was just really hyper focused on a lot of the technique the whole time I was swimming, you know, and I remember one of the only other things that really came up

was just thinking how long the swim was, even though it’s the shortest part of the triathlon. You know, it just seemed like it was forever. But nonetheless, I made it to the end and jumped up on the bank and took off towards transition and never looked at my watch. And as soon as I ran into transition, I looked at my watch and it said just over 24 minutes. And I remember thinking, what did I mess up? How did I did I not start my watch at the right time? Or there’s no way that time is right. Because I had originally set a goal for 27 minutes and I was thinking there’s no way I saw 24, you know, on this race. Anyway, later at the end of the race, I looked at the results and realized that I had swam a 2345. So I was blown away. That’s unreal. No, I was able to do that. So but I do, you know, I would certainly say, you know, probably the three big things that I would attribute to that would be one, the consistency,

right? So starting in January, swimming consistently three to four times a week. I was swimming my pools and yards, but I was swimming in the neighborhood of 3000 yards every time I swam. I started using some of your structured training. So my swimming was a lot more structured as far as what I was doing instead of just aimlessly swimming around.

But the outside of the consistency and the structure training, another, you know, big piece of that was that I was able to do the strength training with the bands and focus on technique while doing that. And so I felt like I had a lot of the strength that I would need in the appropriate muscles to be able to swim. I just didn’t have the technique. You know, I didn’t have the experience and balance and everything that people who’ve been swimming a lot longer would potentially have. So I feel like that was another, you know, really big thing that helped me. And then of course, I’d say a coach just because, you know, having you being able to look at some of the things that I wouldn’t identify on my own, I feel like really made a big difference too, just because, you know, I had a second set of eyes and somebody who was experienced, you know, which I will admit, I was very hesitant at first to use the service just because you are, you know, outside of my area. I want to try

to find somebody locally, but I couldn’t find anybody locally. And, you know, I really needed to do something. And so after I signed up for your service, one of the main reasons why I did it was just because you have worked with so many triathletes and because you have worked with so many people that are in a similar situation, right? A late adult onset swimmer as opposed to somebody who’s been swimming their entire life. So I feel like, you know, combining all those things together, I feel like that, you know, between the consistency, the strength work and having the coach, I feel like really made a big difference. Yeah. Oh, there’s so much there that you’ve mentioned that I want to go into. And I think for your first ever open water swim, race and triathlon, that is, that’s really impressive. And like it’s, I find the first time you do anything, but there’s so much that you learn, you take away that you can apply next time,

which you’ve obviously gotten, you know, it’s like wearing a new pair of goggles that you’ve never worn before. Like that. I knew better, but you know, just I made the same mistake before too. It’s just like, you know, you’re in the race, you’re about to race, you’re in the zone, it’s just like, I need to just kind of in a bit of a rush. And so look, I’ve made that same mistake too before. But there’s, yeah, there’s a lot there. And I think to go from 212 to 136 for the race is really impressive. And we’ve seen your times are going really nicely in training, they’re continuing to come down, which is, which is great. And you’ve mentioned as part of your goal, the next, like the big goal would be, can you get your swim under 20 minutes? And it’s, for me, it seems like there’s, there’s absolutely the, there’s, you’re able to work towards that, because there’s so much potential there because you’re so new to it. And, and you’ve had such a big jump already. So it’s,

like, I can’t think of too many people that have done as well as you have in such a short amount of time. But as you said, those, the consistent training helps three, four times a week, doing the distance that you’re doing, like that makes such a difference just that alone. The bands are great. And you’re talking about using a TheraBand to work on some of these, like the catch and that sort of thing. Is that what you’re referring to? So actually, it’s kind of a variation of how some people use the bands. These bands are actually attached to a door frame. And I talked to a guy who actually took paddles and connected the paddles to the bands. So I actually put my hands in the paddles and then actually focus on doing the catch. And, you know, really, I stretch them far enough to where it’s under a huge load. So it’s almost like doing real high speed sets with paddles on in a pool. But you can do it at a slower pace under tension and focus on a lot of the technique while you’re doing it.

So I feel like I was able to build a lot of strength by doing that. Yeah, that’s that’s good. And I think if there’s someone listening, that kind of stuff can help so much because if you sometimes it’s hard to get this stuff right in the water, and if you can’t get it right out of the water, then it’s probably not going to happen in the water. So something like working on your catch and developing that strength with the paddles, like it takes you 10 minutes, you just you can do those exercises at home. You don’t need to get your bay design. You don’t need to go to the pool. It’s it’s easy to do. So it’s it’s I think that’s like because if someone you know if someone was to watch your videos and look at your catch, they wouldn’t say you’ve really been swinging properly since since January. It’s it’s really good. And I mean, I think it’s your right arm that’s like it catches looking excellent. And then on the left arm, it goes a little bit deep and straight because we’re

working on not over rotating. But it’s it’s really impressive. So for someone listening, like doing some either Thera bands or with the paddles and practicing that high elbow position is is really, really worthwhile doing. And I’ve got this five minute Thera band warm up. I don’t know if you’ve seen that in the inside of the membership, but it’s like a five minute warm up that goes through internal external rotations, reverse flies and that movement with the catch. And if you get that movement, the catch right out of the water and you start to train it, it’s it’s very helpful. And one of the things that I I learned from a previous guest on the podcast, he works with with people who have been through a stroke. And he says that one of the ways that you can enhance the like the uptake of of a new motor pattern is to either do things faster, so that like the faster you do something, the the more the I think the neurons sort of switch on and allows you to develop that motor pattern

or under a bigger load. And so there you’re talking about, you know, you’re putting a bit of power through it. So that’s your load. So yeah, it’s those two things that can help speed up the process of learning this new movement. So it was just interesting to hear you hear you say that and start actually a little bit closer to the door and get the warm up in just to make sure I don’t hurt myself, you know, pulling with a lot of tension. And then I’ll take a step back and do a little bit more and then eventually step back until I feel like I’m under a load that, you know, is the way I equate it is in my triathlon training. A lot of times they say lower reps higher weight, just because you build a lot, you know, better connected tissues and tendons and injury resistance. And so it’s kind of working up, you know, obviously, I didn’t start by going back as far as I could and pulling as hard as I can on the band. Otherwise,

I wouldn’t have been swimming during the race. You know, but just building up to it and eventually getting to where I could put it under a lot of load. So it is interesting to hear you say that, you know, that that can help. Yeah, absolutely. And for you, when you first when you first joined and you said you’re hesitant to join just because you want someone locally to work with. When I first started coaching online, doing analysis online, my initial thought was, I don’t know if this is going to work, whether people can actually improve by sending in videos regularly and me providing the feedback, but I’m going to just try it and hopefully it is, it does work because my only experience was working with people face to face at clinics and that sort of thing. But I actually found that in many cases, working in the way that we were working, we send a video once a week or every fortnight. And and I’d give you something

simple to work on this sort of process actually works better for a lot of people because they get the they get to go back there in in their own pool, their training and there’s no distractions. There’s not a coach standing over them looking at every single stroke. So they tend to relax a bit more and then they keep that that focus very simple. And so that way, I’ve actually found the results to often be a lot more effective because it’s over a longer term, but it’s also yeah, just gives us somewhere a lot more sort of time and space to be able to implement the changes. How did you find that process of doing this online as opposed to in person?

So like I said, I was actually looking for somebody locally. I couldn’t find somebody that

I felt like was going to allow me to meet the goals that I was trying to meet. So interestingly enough, I was actually looking for that exact same thing locally, where I could just send my videos to friends or different people who could analyze some of it and tell me. So anyway, when I started looking at your membership, I thought, well, why not? Right? What’s the difference? What’s the difference? Let me send the video to people here versus anywhere else. And so yeah, I thought it was great, you know, just because being able to send it to you. Like I said, I get some good simple feedback and what and, you know, check out these 10 different things and work on all this at once. It was more of yes, I understand there’s more to unpack and more that we need to work on, but this is the number one biggest opportunity you’re focused right now. So focus on this. So it was great because then I would take that and add it to my card for what I was going to do at the

pool for the next week. And I would incorporate that into a lot of times my warm up and then try to also focus on it towards the end of my swimming. I mean, not that I wasn’t focused on the whole time, I would just use more focus towards the end, especially when I was fatigued to really pay attention to that technique and, you know, doing things like you were saying, don’t make sure you’re not looking at the ceiling, make sure you’re looking across the, basically I try to look at the lane rope instead of looking at the ceiling when I’m breathing. And that’s how I knew that I wasn’t over rotating when that was one of the big things that we were looking at. And for you as well, since we started, what’s your awareness in the water been like compared to say back in January? So when you’re swimming, do you feel like you’re much more aware of when things are right and when they’re wrong and how has that changed for you? Yeah, I know I certainly do. I will say, and I’m sure a

lot of people feel this, every now and then I’ll swim that one interval that’s significantly faster and you want to go back and look at the video and try to determine exactly what you did differently. And most of the time, there’s no difference. It’s the same stroke rate. You know, I mean, I say there’s no difference, but I’m sure if you looked at it, there’s some small little change. But that’s a lot of what I found, you know, working with you, especially over the last two or three months is that while I don’t see a big change or I don’t notice anything large, a lot of times it’s just the small little things that, you know, sometimes you have to over exaggerated a little bit. But for the most part, some small little changes can actually make a huge difference in the times. I’m really starting to see that now, even after the race, you know, the last week, you know, making just some small changes based

on some things that we’ve talked about that I’m really focusing on more now, just because I’m not hyper focused on open water swimming and doing, you know, trying to prepare for the race. So yeah, that’s interesting. A recent guest that had on was Chung Wan and he had a similar improvement with working together. And those are one of the things he mentioned was that he’d look at his videos, we couldn’t really see that difference, because they’re so they’re really minor oftentimes, but when you slow it down enough and you and you sort of know what to look for, like it’s they’re there and it’s these little it’s 1%, 2% changes over the time,

you know, over months that really start to add up. And one of the things I wanted to say as well is a thing that you that I think was so beneficial that you did was going to the open water, practicing that practicing the sighting before the race. I’ve had a few a few summers recently just asked me I’ve got races coming up because they’re they’re all starting in the States and it’s coming into summer. So what should I do beforehand? And I think a couple good things can be if you can’t get to the open water, do some make sure you practice your sighting in the maybe in your main set, just maybe look up twice a lap and get used to that, maybe wear a wetsuit for a couple of sessions as well just to get used to that because it’s going to feel a little bit different than without. But the best thing you can do is just get in the open water if you have that chance and if you have the chance to swim with other people, you might

practice swimming close to each other, maybe drafting and just get familiar with that that again because it’s been a long time out for so many people that that you know you just want to you want to go in prepared and nothing beats the real thing because I feel like open water is like that it’s like the fifth strike you got fly back breast and free and open water is that fifth strike it’s it can feel quite different in there so getting that that experience beforehand is is helpful and did you did you feel like confidence wise it obviously helped but did you feel like it helped you on race day as well just with the stroke and getting used to it? I do absolutely. Yeah so I’m kind of laughing when you’re talking about practicing and getting prepared in the open water just because looking at some of my first GPS tracks for some of the first open water swims preparing probably a month before the race I’m all over the place you know zigzag

and I’m obviously not inciting but once every 20 strokes or something like that I can tell that I was all over the place and so the more that you know you and I were talking about siding and the more that I actually got to practice it the straighter I was able to swim actually one thing I noticed during the race is in the longest leg that 750 meter leg between the two buoys at one point I felt like I was way off to the left of the main pack the main group of people and I couldn’t figure out why and then I realized it’s because everybody was following each other rather than siding looking at the boot so there were about 25 people off to the right and one guy was actually way off almost swimming on the bank and when I looked up I was actually in line with the faster pack ahead of me but there was this whole group of people like 20-25 people off to the right that were just following each other and they weren’t siding you

know so to your point actually being able to get out there and focus on that siding and pay attention to swimming straight one other thing I did is before the race too because I didn’t have an opportunity to get an open water as much as I wanted to is I would actually close my eyes when I was swimming in the pool I would only open on when I went to go for a breath or to sight and so at least that way I could just really focus on paying attention to you know pretending like I was siding off in the distance I felt like that kind of helped because you don’t realize how much hysterical I’m on the bottom of the pool to swim straight yeah that’s right exactly right and that’s someone who’s asked me this this morning and they mentioned about like they’re having trouble with their siding and you know what what should they do and I said all right let’s start let’s practice it in training leading up to this this race this weekend

but if the main thing is like you’re better off swimming straight and siding more regularly than siding every 20 strokes and veering off course because if you swim 10% further let’s say in your 1500 meter race you swim 150 meters more that extra 10% if you’re swimming at two minute pace that’s 12 seconds per 100 extra that it’s going to take you basically so all right you’re two minutes from that well you’re swimming two to 12 essentially because of the the extra distance that you’re doing so if you can get just comfortable with your siding and you can sight with that that sight and breathe method where you don’t look up too high you just kind of go crocodile eyes you turn the head to the side after the breathe you can just really make it a part of your stroke where your rhythm and your balance isn’t affected and that way you can I think I was reading your comments like laser like you cut it like a laser it’s you can be so

straight with with your course and you can really just save so much time that way and it sounded like that’s that’s exactly what happened which look at you’re probably the first person in the world to to do that on their first open water swim but I guess it’s that’s the practice that’s helped you do it here maybe it was luck I guess we’ll find out in September yeah that’s right well I appreciate you jumping on it’s it’s been great to hear a bit more about your your story and where you’ve got to now and I’m looking forward to next couple of months and just seeing what we can bring the the times down to because yeah it’s just it’s on this really great trajectory and there’s still a lot of stuff that we can obviously do in the in the stroke which we’re seeing and that’s that’s exciting so thanks very much for being on and yeah look forward to continue working with you yeah absolutely thank you I appreciate it now

look forward to hitting that 20 minute mark let’s do it yeah thanks right all right awesome 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 #175: “I Couldn’t Believe My Time When I Looked At My Watch” with Trey St. John appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Hollie Buerckner who just completed a 100km around the bay, starting from Port Melbourne finishing in Sorrento. Join us in this podcast as Hollie shares her experience during that 5 day swim.

4:52 Having a great support system is important

7:27 Unlucky Weather

8:28 First To Last Day Experience

13:47 Struggles

21:59 Block Negative Thoughts

26:30 Swimming With Your Old Self

31:11 Everything Comes To An End

33:56 Expand your Comfort Zone

40:10 Post Swim

48:50 It’s Not About Winning, More on Improving Yourself

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I look back on it and I’m like, of course, it’d be so much easier and it would have been so much greater to have it just so smooth. But I feel like the swim wouldn’t have been the swim that I did if it wasn’t choppy. Like that, the messy water and the conditions made, kind of like made me so much stronger in the head than what it just swimming flat water would have, because I had to be, had to become very determined to my own head to be like, I am doing this, I don’t care what’s going to happen in the water. I have to get in this water and do this. 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 Holly Birkner. And Holly and I have swam a little bit when I was living in regional Victoria. And the reason I’ve got Holly on is she just completed a 100 kilometer swim from Port Sea to Port Melbourne, which is in the Bay here in Melbourne. She did that across five days. And I was following your journey on Facebook. Holly just glad I wasn’t in there, the one doing it, but pretty inspired by what you did. So first of all, welcome and congratulations. Thank you so much for that. What I quite like about your swim is it was, it’s very much to choose your own adventure. There was no set race. There was no, you know, there was nothing apart from you just decided to do it one day. What was that moment for you that you decided this was something that you wanted to go for? When we were in the middle of quarantine, lockdown last year, I was talking to my family and stuff like that. More talking about a swim I did when I was like 16

down the river. And I get very, I’m a very competitive person. And I almost got competitive with my old self. And I was like, wow, like 16 year old Holly was able to do this insane swim. I was like, surely I haven’t peaked yet in my swimming. So I was like, no, I have to do another swim. I was saying to dad, I was like, I’m too competitive to let my younger self win. So I went to bed that night and I literally laid in my bed and I mapped out a swim in the bay. And I was like, let’s see if I can go in an extra 20 Ks what I did when I was younger. So again, I was sitting in bed and I mapped out a plan. I woke up the next morning and I went to mom and dad and I was like, this is what I want to do 100 Ks in the bay. They kind of looked at me and like, oh, like, maybe we should, you know, give you a couple of days to really think about if you want to do this. And I stuck it on the fridge and I was like, no, this is what’s going to happen next year. We’re doing it.

That’s so good. And that the swim that you did before. So it was that was it down the Murray? Yeah. So it was from the Chuka Moama Bridge to Trembrew Whale. So it was 80 Ks pretty much followed like the Southern 80 course, the ski race. So we watched that for years. And I was so used to that race that I was like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna swim the 80 Ks. And across how many days was that? Because I remember when we were chatting to you, the first day you went hard. You did a big swim that first day and paid for it. So we did it. Our original plan was four days. And then I was like, no, I can do them three days. Like, we’re gonna do four days. So the first day was about 32 Ks or something like that. So we went, maybe it was even a bit longer. So we went way longer than I probably should have. And I just smashed myself that first day. And I really paid for it the second day, especially because I also were camping on the side of the river. And my mat, my sleeping mat went down. So I was sleeping on

the hard ground that night. And I was sunburned my face because I forgot sunscreen. And my arms were sore and hopped back in the water the next day. And I was like, Oh, this is gonna, this is gonna be so bad. It’s gonna hurt so much.

And how far to do that second day? Oh, I think it was about 25 or so. Because we made it the last day was going to be the shortest. So I don’t think we plan too well. Like, oh, we’ll go really long first day, medium second day, short third day. And the second day, I think was the hardest because I knew that I had to get in the water the next day after that. And I was like, far out like, how are you going to do this? This is going to hurt. What did you take that idea to your mum and dad when you were 16? You said I want to swim down. Yeah, I think I was actually like 14 and a half 15. And I was like, this is, this is what I’m going to do. And, um, yeah, of course, they looked at me and they’re like, sure thing, like you’re going to swim 80ks down the river, you’re like 15 years old. And I was like, no, I’m going to do it. Like, there’s no stopping me.

And then, yeah, we, I was meant to do it when I was 15, but there was floods and everything that hit the river. So we had to push it back later. And I was like, dad, I was like, no, like I’m going to be 16 now when I do it. It’s not as cool. Like I want to be 15.

But, um, I still got it done. And I was maybe I was happy that I was 16 because, yeah, that hurt.

Yeah. Well, look, I think of, um, I mean, your parents, um, I imagine be really proud of that, especially at that age, doing something like that. And, um, and then doing, having done the swim a couple of weeks ago, the 100k swim. So they, it wasn’t just you going out there and swim by yourself for 20k a day. It was a, quite a bit of a team effort. Um, do you want to talk a bit about what, what was involved with, I guess, the safety and the feeding and, um, and the support that you had around you to help you complete the swim successfully? Yeah. I had a huge support team. So I had my mom and dad. So my dad was kind of like my nutrition man, like, let’s get in the water now. We’re starting at sick, very lit, like, um, logistics kind of based. He was like, we’re doing this amount of k’s these days, you know, hop in at this time, hop out at this time, you’ll feed them. My mom was very more, um, supportive in like, she would, she’s a masseuse. So she’s done

sport massage and everything like that. So she would rub down my shoulders each night, my back, um, get me, she does also Pilates. So she got me through Pilates movements to help stretch each night, um, each night. Um, and she also had a role in nutrition because she knows a lot about the amount of energy, like calories that I need, different things like that. Um, and then I had my two brothers and they were pretty much their support was just making me laugh. Like they would, they would just say different things to me or like, throw food at me in the water or just do something like that. They would just be like, like shake my head and laugh with them, especially, um, my brother’s just younger, me too. He’s younger. He swam a lot with me. He did 10 k’s on the first day with me and he hadn’t swum for weeks beforehand, but he’s like, oh, I did 10 k’s with you the first day. So on, yeah, on the second day he hopped in, did 10 k’s with me and then, um,

we were singing songs together when we popped our head up to eight and he had sprinkles of coconut oil because he thought it was tasty and delicious. So just little things like that made me laugh. And then I also had my partner come along with me. He was like my emotional support kind of like when I was breaking down, he was like, no, no, you can do this. Like, let’s keep going. And I was like, oh, like, no, get me out of the water. This was a stupid idea. Like, why did I decide to do this? He was like, no, no, you’ll be fine. Get back in again. So like, and then I also had Matt Alice who came along as well and he was like, we wouldn’t have been able to do it without him because he bought his jet ski and everything like that. And he was a swimmer with me and just another person that would make me laugh along the way. So as long as I had good company, good people to make me laugh, then it was going to be fine.

So yeah, it was really a great group of support.

Yeah, no. And the window that you chose was an interesting one because you just kind of got a bit unlucky with the weather. And I remember when you said, I’m going to be starting on the, what was it, the, yeah, the Wednesday. And I looked at the winds and the weather and I saw it and went, wow, that’s going to be interesting with these strong, really strong, westerly winds and you’re swimming sort of across it. And it’s just basically like onshore slop in the bay where it’s, it makes for very hard, a very hard slog. Now, so you planned for five days. And the fifth day was, well, on the coast, it was the biggest swell they’d had on it in a decade. Now you’re in the bay, so it’s kind of protected from that, but it didn’t mean that it was protected from the wind and the rain and everything else. So you had to rest on day five and then finish on day six. So how, how did the weather sort of have been straight for you across the week? And then what did it mean for your

initial support boat and a few other things along the way? Well, day one started off great. It was, we started like six a.m. in the morning, so it’s still a little bit dark. It was so flat. I could see the bottom. It was beautiful clear water down the Lake Porto Sorrento area. It’s always beautiful. And I was able to smash out 12Ks in about three hours, just under three hours. So I was flying. And then I finished day one and I was like, okay, like, that was all right. The conditions were good. I was like, everything else will be fine. Then day two was the same. It was sunny. It was warm. We were swimming along comfortably. There was not much of a chop, like a little bit of one, but not too bad. And we got to the Mornington Pier where I was meant to finish on day two. And my mum and dad were like, oh, maybe you should like swim a bit extra today. And I was like, why? I’m here now. I might as well just get out.

They’re like, oh, the weather’s not too good tomorrow. Maybe you should swim just like a little bit further. And I was like, all right, I’ll swim up to the other end of the beach and then I’ll hop out from there. Because when I see my finish point, my mind like switches off and it’s like outside, like, yeah, finish, good job for the day. But I was like, okay, I’ll get to the other side. And yeah, then after day two, that’s when everything started to go a bit downhill. So we had a boat that was following me and because I was about okay or so off the beach. So the boat is where I would have my lunch

after three hours. And then I’ll hop back in the water again. So after at the end of day two, we were getting ready to go in and we’re like, oh, we’ll see tomorrow morning, like, we’re going to start here. And they’re like, oh, nah, like, we’re not going to turn up tomorrow. We’re like, oh, what? They’re like, nah, it’s too windy. Like, when does when do you want to start up again? And I was like, oh, no, I’m swimming tomorrow. He was like, he was like, oh, well, we weren’t we weren’t becoming with you. So when that got told to us, mom and dad were like, like, oh, my God, like, what do we do? So they didn’t really want to tell me. They were just like, we’ll plan this without Holly. You have the jet skater time. Yes, we had the jet ski for the first day. And that was the one that was the vessel pretty much that was like next to me the whole time, whereas the boat was a bit further in front. And the jet ski would hand me my food

on my hourly breaks. So yeah, we were like, oh, like, what are we going to do? We have like X amount of people that are supporting me. And I’ve got to come in, or I get on land or a boat or something like that for my three hour break to have food.

So like, okay, like, we’ll swim a little bit closer to shore, we’ll have a jet ski next to me. And then we’ll have land people like, okay, we can do that, we’ll figure this out.

And we were, I remember we’re laying in the hotel room, we were staying each night. And mom was massaging my arms and we had the news on and the weather came up for the next day. And it was atrocious. And I was like, I was like, someone who needs to turn that off, like, I can’t see that I need to just, I need to be in my own head. I was like, I can’t, I don’t want to see the weather. I just want to know that I have to swim. So I have to do, I have to get from Mornington Pier, which is where I was going to start the next day to Bob Beach, which was about 20 Ks. And yeah, so we woke up the next morning and we went down to the beach and I was standing there looking out and the water was so choppy, you could almost, yeah, you could always body surf in that water. I was like, oh no, but my brother was great. He was like, we’ll hop in together. And the good thing was, it was a southwesterly. So there was like a little bit of a push towards the way I was

heading. So when I, before I hopped in, I, my family is very supportive and stuff like that. But I think they’ll be very realistic looking at the conditions, looking at how far I have to swim and being like, oh, I don’t know if you’re going to make it. Like, we’ll just try to get to Frankston, which was about going to be about the halfway point of that day. And then CB hit the Bob Beach. And they were like, oh, like, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to make it. I’m going to be very choppy when I have to pull you out. And I think because I got all those things coming into my head, people like a boat person pulling out saying it’s too windy,

different people in the support crew going, oh, it’s a bit too windy. We’re not sure if we can do it. I think in my head, I was like, you know what, no, I’m going to prove you all wrong. I’m going to swim to Bon Beach. That’s where I have to get to. I don’t care what anyone else says to me. I’m going to get to my finish point. I don’t care how long it takes me. It can take me to 6pm, but I’m going to make it to Bon Beach that day. And it ended up being my quickest day. I got out of the water around one o’clock because I think in my head I was just like, no, you can do this. It doesn’t matter what can happen. You’re going to swim there. And I got to Frank’s and dad was like, oh, okay. He’s like, we can definitely get to Bon Beach, but not too far now. And I was like, yep. So he told you I was going to get there. Like, what a breeze. I think I know how to motivate you. Tell you you can’t do it. Yeah. If I get told that I can’t do something, it’s always been motivated to make me do it.

Um, literally since I was like nine years old and dad’s like, no, you can’t beat me in the pool. I’ll be like, I can beat you now. You just watch me. Um, so yeah, that’s definitely always been a bit of a pusher when people kind of doubt me. I’m like, well, I’m going to show you that I can do it. Like, doesn’t matter what’s going to happen. Like, yeah, it’s always going to make me get there no matter what. So yeah, we finished day three and I was like, oh, what a breeze. Like, tomorrow’s day four. And then the last day doesn’t even count in my head. I was thinking that I was like, day four is the last hard day because day five, I can see the spirit of Tasmania where Port Melbourne is. I’m going to be able to get there easy peasy. Um, yeah, day four was, I feel like the ocean gods were really testing me and decided to put me through hell. I, um, I woke up and we went down to Bomb Beach and the winds had changed to like a

northwesterly. So I was getting smacked in the face and, um, the worst thing was is my nutrition was really bad. I, every time I got out of the ocean, I just felt sick, like all through the night. I just couldn’t eat anything, which was really bad. Um, I was in a massive calorie deficit, could not get any food down me, just didn’t really feel like anything. Dad was like force feeding me peanut butter toast each morning. I was like, no, like I’ll have a slice. Like I don’t want to eat anything. Um, so when I hopped in on day four, after previously swimming three days, not having heaps of food, being tired. Um, it was rainy that day, really windy. I think we had gusts of up to like 60, 70 K an hour gusts. So it was white caps everywhere and every lap time I would turn to the side. I’d just get a mouthful um, ocean water and I, the day before it took me an hour to swim about four Ks. This day it took

me an hour to swim just two Ks because I was getting pushed back every time I would get a bit further. I would get pushed back again and I was looking at the shoreline and I popped my head up to my mom and dad on jet ski and I was like, am I moving anywhere? I was like, I don’t think I’ve left bomb beach. I was like, I’m just getting pushed back. Every time I see a building, it takes me like 30 minutes to get past that one building. And I think because of that, it was getting really disheartening. And I was just like, I was swimming by myself. I was like, this is ridiculous. Um, so I got five K done and I popped my head up and my, my lips were blue. I was freezing cold. I couldn’t heat myself up anymore. Um, and mom and dad were like, Oh God, like, we’re going to have to take you in when there’s no way you can keep going like this. So we went into the beach and we found some random life saving club thing.

And they sat me in it, grabbed a space blanket, wrapped me up in it. I couldn’t like, really undress myself properly because I was so cold. I had heart failure. Um, and then I was sitting in that life saving club because it’s just completely empty. No one wants to be at the beach that day. And I was just like having a full breakdown. I was like, I don’t want to get back in the water. I don’t want to put my wetsuit on again. Like, and I think it was more emotional because my, like I knew in my head in the back of my mind, I had to get in the water. Like, mom and dad were like, do we want to go home? And I was like, no, no, no, just give me five minutes. I need to like break down and build myself back up again and then get in the water.

They had to warm me up. They tried to get some food into me and went to a cafe, stuff like that. And then I was sitting in the corner of the cafe and everyone was talking and in my head, all I could think was, oh, wow, you have to get back in this water and swim another 15k. It’s like, this is going to take you forever. And it was just like in my head. I was like, oh my God, like, how do you think you’re going to be able to do this? Um, it’s northwesterly. There’s white caps everywhere. Anyway, and then I came up with the idea. I was like, dad, why don’t we drive to my finish point for the day and I’ll swim back to my start point. And then at least the waves will be behind me. So I was like, is that cheating? He’s like, no, you’re still doing the case. He’s like, he’s like, the water’s atrocious. So it’s like, you’ve already swam 10ks because you’ve just been pushed back every time you swimming. So we drove up to Sandingham and we hopped in the water

and we started swimming and my brother, this is, this is how choppy it was. My brother was on the back of the jet ski being my nutrition person, my fuel person, handing me the food. And I climbed on for one of my fuel brakes and my dad started handing me the stuff. And I was like, oh, what’s going on? And he’s like, your brother’s been seasick for the last 30 minutes. He’s over the start of the jet ski throwing up. And I was like, I just, it was, it almost made me laugh so much because someone else was in pain. And I was like, I’m so sorry, like, I’ve still got two hours to go. I was like, you’re going to have to sit on the back of this jet ski for two hours feeling seasick. So he was on the back. My dad was trying to watch me watch the waves so the jet ski didn’t roll, make sure my brother didn’t fall off the back when he was leaning over the side of vomiting. And it was just an absolute mess out there. I don’t,

I don’t, when I think back to it, I’m like, I don’t know how we survived that. Like, we should have been headed towards Tasmania or something that’s pushed away. Like, it was, it was so messy. Yeah, I mean, I saw the video of you maybe getting out that day at the end of it. Like, you might have posted that on Facebook. And it was like, it is some of the worst conditions I’ve ever seen down in the bay. It was, it was horrendous. And actually, it was that day or the next day. So the next day when you had to postpone that there was people surfing at St Kilda. I saw a footage of people surfing at St Kilda, which is normally pretty flat. You know, there’s nothing, but yeah, the wind was just that bad. And so the next day you woke up and what happened then? I was so angry. We were staying in Brighton and mum and dad woke up to go put the cars in like the different, like the star point, the finish point, so we could get everywhere. And they went up to my star point for the day

and they came back to the hotel room with me up to the like, look, you’re gonna have to postpone the swim. And I was fuming. I was like, excuse me. I was like, this is my last day. I was like, I don’t care what the conditions are. I was like, put me in the water. Mum and dad looking at me like, no way. Like, we can’t actually do it. It’s gonna, like the jet skis gonna roll or you’re gonna like, just push their way. And I was like, no, I was like, put me in the water. And then as I was saying it, dad got like a weather warning on his phone for lightning in the bay. And I was like, and he’s like, we cannot hop in the water when there’s lightning. I was like, I know, but I just, I was like, surely I can swim like late in the day. They’re like, no, I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to wait for tomorrow. And that was like so, like, I felt so angry and just frustrated because I was like, I’ve just been looking forward to this

last day. Like, it was going to be the end of it. I was going to finish. And yeah, he was like, nah, sorry, we have to stop now. It’s like a hot damn. So what did you do to kill time and play yourself? We ended up coming home and that was probably actually a blessing because I got food into me that day. I was, because I wasn’t getting into the water. I wasn’t exerting myself. I wasn’t tired. We came home and I, a lot of food for the next day because I didn’t realize it because it was raining all that day. The water and the temp in the bay had dropped like maybe two or three degrees because I hopped back in the next day down Sandringham. And it was so icy, like the water around my head. I was like, thank goodness I have food in me. Like, I have no idea how I’ve gotten through this. If I didn’t have anything yet in me, I’m pretty sure the water quality was quite bad. I came out of the water with like brown around my face. And

Mom and Dad were like, oh, like, maybe we shouldn’t check to see what the water quality is. We’ll just hope that your immune system kills this. Yeah, it’s probably a good thing. The comment, who does it? It’s not the EPA, but they do a water quality report up until the end of like, maybe March or the end of like February or something. So I don’t know if they’re still doing it then. Yeah, check anyway, just in case it was like really bad. And then Mom and Dad were like, maybe we shouldn’t put you in here. Yeah, yeah, just don’t look at it. That’s what I’ve done. If we’ve ever had a swim, like I just never factor in the water quality. If there’s been rain, it’s going to be gross. Yeah, I was like to Dad. I was like, this week, I don’t really want to know the wind. I don’t want to know the rain. I don’t want to know the water quality. I just want to get from point A to point B every day. And that’s all I need to do.

And what was different about the swim than what you expected going in?

I think I didn’t realize how much internal motivation I had to have. Because I was like, I’ll put my head up every hour and talk to someone and every three hours I get in the boat and I’ll talk to someone. I was like, this is going to be like a breeze. I’ll be fine. But I didn’t realize that my head was going to be down in water for six to seven hours a day. And I had my own thoughts to deal with for that whole time. Like even though I had companies swimming, you can’t talk to each other. Not like when you go for a ride or run with someone. You’re with your own thoughts, no matter what. And you have to deal with everything that comes into your head. And sometimes it was really deep thoughts. And then sometimes it was literally just like one, two, three, one, two, three. And it was just counting in my head because I was like, what else am I going to do? But then sometimes I was like, I think my brother showed me this open water swimmer that did like 100Ks and 12 hours or

something like that with a really good tide. And I was like, and when I was swimming along and I think it was like day four or something, I was like, I’m not one of these open water swimmers. Like, why are you doing this? Like you’re just fooling yourself. There’s no way you can actually do this. And then as soon as I thought started to pop my head, that’s when I started to get cold. It’s like when I started to hurt my arms hurt more. And I was like, okay, you really need to block these thoughts out and you just have to become more like, yeah, this is easy. Like, oh, what’s, it’s just swimming. You’re just swinging your arms over for seven hours. Like, you can do that. What a, what a breeze. So it became very like one thought or the other when I was really tired, I could only count or I could only play a game in my head.

So yeah, it was even my own thoughts. I would, on my, when I used to go to school, I would catch a bus every morning. And I had a bus route that had 16 stops on it. And I would try to remember each stop that we went to. And then I would also try and list each person that hopped on at the different stops. And because I went from year five to year 12 to that school, so many people changed. So I was swimming along and I was like, okay, yeah, this person hops on here and then that person hops on there. And it really, it made three Ks go so quick. And I was like, oh, like, break time, like that’s awesome. Whereas other times I was like, how has five minutes gone by? Like that took forever just to get one K down. Yeah, that’s one of the hardest things I find about, about long distance swimming. And like I’ve done a whole lot of it, but whenever I’ve had those big sessions where it might be, you know, eight, 10, or like 15 K, like open water, so it’s like, yeah, it’s just being in your own head.

It’s a long time to spend there. And just occupy your mind for that, for that long can be difficult. I found that it was okay when it was good conditions and I was swimming next to someone and it was nice and I could appreciate the view and the warm weather and all of that. But yeah, you didn’t have any of that part from the first day. So it’s just when it’s just a grind, that is that’s really hard to put up with. So what did you with your thoughts like, what did you tell yourself when you were going into those deeper thoughts or when you’re being negative about what you told yourself, I’m not one of those distance swimmers, that sort of thing? Yeah, I kind of, I started to think kind of more that this was going to be an 80% mental thing and 20% physical. Because when I hopped in the water, my partner was like, oh, have you done like a 10 K of water swim before? And I was like, no, like, this is like my first time I’m going to do 20 K

is like whatever. And then when I got into my reports, I was like, wow, I was like, okay, maybe you’re not meant to be here. And then as soon as I started to think those, I was like, I was like, no, you’re going to do this for a reason, like you’re going to swim this for a reason. I was like, every time I take a stroke, like I’ve, I kind of started to think more that there’s like a comfort zone around everyone. And each time I took a stroke to get further into my swim, I was like, my comfort zone is just growing and I’m getting bigger. And like everything I do here is going to make me grow in some way or the other. And yeah, like those dark thoughts, it was insane how when those happened, my swimming slowed down. I found it harder. I got colder. My arms hurt more. I felt rashes on my body more. Whereas then all of a sudden I started to imagine myself. It was kind of like I imagined myself swimming with my past selves. It was very weird.

I think I got a little bit too wippy in my head. I also started thinking about nine-year-old Holly when she first started swimming and how I would swim up and down the pool and I was so keen just to swim anywhere. And I would imagine her swimming next to me and I’d have like a conversation almost with her. And then I would have 16-year-old Holly who did the river swim saying that like, oh, like, come on, you really think that you’re as fast as me? And I would always like race myself. It was very weird. And I would have like my 18-year-old self who was in year 12 who didn’t really swim going, wow, like you’ve actually done really well to still be swimming now. So I had like, yeah, these past selves of me kind of swimming, which was really weird. But then also the mental thing was kind of funny because I had so many great comments coming through like, oh, you’re amazing, like you’ve done so much, like, blah, blah, blah. It almost gave me this emotional side and it made me kind of like

care in a weird way. Like I felt all of a sudden like emotional. I was like, oh, people really care about me. Like that’s so sweet. And then as soon as those caring thoughts came in, I kind of had to shut them down because then I was like, oh, like, I kind of felt soft in the inside in a weird way. I was like to mum and dad, I was like, is it bad that I don’t read these comments? I was like, I can’t read them because as soon as I read them, I start to care and I start to feel emotional. And then if I feel emotional, I don’t want to swim because I just want to be comfortable in a bed in warmth. So I kind of had to become like this animal kind of thing where I don’t have human emotions. I just have swimming, eating, sleeping, and that’s all I’m going to be doing. So yeah, I really had to like block those bits out and be like, no, you’re just here to swim. You’re not here to talk to anyone. It’s no external motivation. Just become very internal to yourself. And yeah, whatever thought

you have, you’re just going to deal with it. You’re going to mail on it and then you’re going to let it pass. And that’s going to have to happen for seven hours a day, every day. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up and being willing to share it because like those thoughts, I think a lot of people who have done maybe something similar to you have thought about them and but maybe not express them because it’s like, this is a bit weird. Maybe I’m the only one who I’ve never swum to next to past versions of myself. But like I know with the like with those comments and that sort of thing, it’s like that can distract from what you’re actually doing in a way. And it’s like, it’s good to get it at the end afterwards. But not while you’re still going like it doesn’t sometimes it just doesn’t really help because it’s yeah, just takes you out of the out of the moment a little bit. Yeah. And I said that to mom and dad. I was like, am I a bad person that I don’t want to read these that I’m not

replying? I was like, I feel like I’m a bad person because everyone’s so sweet and all the messages are so kind. And normally if I read them, I’d be like, thank you so much. But in that weird five days, it was like this little blip of my life when just nothing mattered. And like my head was like the only thing that I was in like even conversations I would just kind of blank out of. And I was like, no, like I’m in this complete different world for myself. And I was like to my mom and dad was like, I just can’t read them because as soon as I start reading them, I feel like emotional. And then I want to be in home in bed in a warm comfy environment. And I don’t want to get back into that ocean. Whereas yet getting into the ocean and swimming for seven hours five days a week is just it’s not kind of human. Like you’re not meant to really do that and your mind’s not really meant to be doing that. So I was like, I have to become non human kind of

experience. Yeah, I think it’s like, like you’re there, but you’re not actually like looking out at the world in a way. And like, I remember being, this is at the,

like, yes, it was start line of Iron Man and then similar for the Rot Nessum as well. It was kind of like beforehand, it’s like, everyone’s saying, yeah, good luck and all that sort of stuff. And it’s like, yep, thanks. But you’re not really taking it in. You’re just like your heads in a different spot. But yeah, you need to do it. Otherwise, you’re, you get distracted, you get emotional about stuff and you think too much about the task, task ahead. It’s like, no, you’ve just got to get yourself into the zone. And just like, yeah, you’re looking out there, but you’re actually switching off from all of it really. And you’re like, I can’t hear anything and I can’t see anything, but like the first thing that I have to do. And I feel like that Fridge Mount Day two, I hopped in the water and I was like, Oh my God, like this is, this is so painful. Like my arms are so sore. I was like, you’re not even halfway today.

Like you tomorrow, like today’s not even going to be halfway yet. You still got so much longer to go. And as I was swimming along, I was like, it’s not like it sounds very morbid, but everything comes to an end as even though that sounds really sad and depressing, things come to an end. And no matter what that day was going to come to an end and that swim leg was going to come to an end. And I just had to get there one way or another. And I feel like now ever since coming back, now I think that all the time, I’m like, this assignment will end or this worksheet will end. Everything’s going to end at some point. It’s just how you’re going to get there and how you’re going to occupy yourself for that small, tiny little time of like, I felt like day two was never going to end. And now it’s been two weeks since that swim had even happened. And I was like, wow, it’s over now. Like everything’s going to stop. The pain is going

to stop. You’re going to hear we’re going to get better. And I was just like, wow, like, yeah, okay, you can do this then. Like one way or the another, you’re going to end up in bed tonight and it’s going to be fine. Yeah, that’s a that’s a good approach to it. And yeah, really mature approach to it as well, which is, which is fantastic because it’s, it is just got to do what you have to do to get get to the end of the day. And I’m like, I’m looking at that. Have you seen the iron cowboy? Have you seen? Yes, my family loves all that. That’s what I grew up with in my house. So like, seeing him, I don’t know, he’s up to 55, maybe 55. I managed to 55 days so far. Like, that is that is interesting, just like to imagine what he might be going through to get through every day. And then knowing you’ve only got a couple of hours sleep a night and then do it all over over again. So, but that kind of approach that you that you mentioned,

it’s yes, it’s these little mental things that you’ve got to, you’ve got to use. Yeah. And I was even talking to my dad, because he’s got an Ironman event happening in June. And I was like, just remember all this training and doing, it’s going to end at one point. I was like, even when you’re think when you’re in the middle of the race, think back to like a training session that is so hard. And you’re like, well, that ended eventually. Like when we did our 100 hundreds in the pool, I was like, at number 70, I was like, this is never going to end. This is ridiculous. And then I was doing the ocean swim. I was like, wow, that was in December. Like that was ages ago. I finished that, that finished that day, finished that pain, finished. So this pain will also finish one way.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. This, this can’t be too bad. Everything as yeah, I keep saying to everyone, it sounds so morbid when you say everything’s going to end, but it’s also kind of a thing that can help you get through different challenges. Like you will be able to get through this one point. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it makes me appreciate things a whole lot more as well. And like this, this year too, with like the, well, last year, I spent so much more time at home because we weren’t traveling or that sort of stuff. And my kids were two and four then and they’re nearly a year older. And it’s just like, not going to get this time back. So it certainly helps you change your approach to, to things. It’s like, I want to spend a bit more time with the, with the kids and, and doing the things that I really want to do. So it’s just, you know, you don’t, you don’t, yeah, you kind of filter out what’s,

what’s actually important to that way. And I think with the stuff that you’re doing, have you found that you’ve levelled up a bit with what you think is, is possible? Because I remember when I first started running, which I started to do probably when I was 19, 20, I, you know, like a five K would be like, well, it was pretty good, you know, six and six K. But you know, then just as I’ve done more and I’ve, I’ve done some bigger weeks, like over lockdown, did a 98 or 97 K week, which I would have never thought possible before. But it’s just like in your mind, you just start to level up and you start to get more comfortable with bigger distances. And it’s the same thing, swimming as well. Have you found that that’s been the case over the last, like six years or so? Yeah, when I was, I remember when I was competitive swimming, so I used to swim mainly in the pool and do all that type of stuff. When a coach would walk right up on the board that we’re

going to do a five K set, I was like, Oh my God, this is going to hurt so much. Like, yeah, I’m going to be exhausted. There’s no way I can get through five Ks. And now, if I see a five K set, I’m like, Oh, like, that’s okay. Like, you can do that easily. It’s going to take like an hour or so. But then it’s funny because now if I saw a, like 10 K set, like in my mind now, I’d still be like a little bit like, Oh, whoa, like, that’s pretty far. Whereas then if I keep swimming like this, then maybe one time I’m going to look at the 10 case and be like, Oh, that’s, that’s an easy training day, like whatever, like you can do that. And it was funny because I because I’ve never, the longest I’d swam in the ocean straight before I did the swim was I think maybe eight K or something like that. Like it wasn’t so funny. And, and when dad went mentioned to me like a year or two ago, he’s like, Oh, do like the 10 K Williamtown swim.

And I was like, 10 K is no way. I can’t swim 10 Ks in the ocean. I like, that’s ridiculous. And he was like, Oh, give it a try. I was like, no way. I can never swim 10 Ks in the ocean. And then, yeah, I skipped 10 Ks and went straight to 20 Ks. And I was like, Oh, 10 K is easy now. Like I can go to do 10 Ks next year, like whatever. So yeah, it’s funny that all sudden I was watching this video about how your, everyone has this little comfort zone circle around them. And each time you do something outside of that, it just grows bigger and bigger. And I feel like during COVID and lockdown, everyone’s kind of comfort zone or circle shrunk so much more because we didn’t go out, we didn’t see people didn’t exercise as much. We didn’t really do anything that was a bit uncomfortable. Whereas after that swim, I feel like my things that I can put inside my comfort zone is so much more like I could be like, yeah, I can do a 21 K run. It’s

not going to hurt that much. I’m not running for seven hours. Or I’m being like, yeah, I can go out and ride for five hours. I don’t mind that anymore. Like everything’s going to be fine. Like, you know what you can do. You know what your mind can do. And you know how to sit in your mind for seven hours a day. So yeah, I’m almost like, yeah, that’s fine. What’s the worst that can happen? Yeah, I find a lot of enjoyment in expanding that comfort zone as well. When I first started running clinics, I mean, I was, I consider it young, but I was 20,

first one I did, I was probably 25. And we had probably a dozen people there. And I’ve never run any before. And so I was like, had to come up with the whole thing. And, and I was so nervous going into it. And like, I planned it, you know, meticulously for the whole week before it. And I was just so nervous about the whole, the whole thing. And it went okay. I don’t think it was, it was amazing. But it was like, you know, it really gave me the sweats just before it. Because, and I was presenting to, to adults, you know, a lot of them are in their 40s and 50s. And I had this complex or so, why would they want to listen to me? Like they probably know more about it than I do. But, you know, you do it enough times. And then you just get comfortable speaking to people and delivering in front of bigger groups and that sort of thing. And we had clinics in New Zealand, probably two years ago now. And there was, I think,

they were like pretty sort of big group clinics of maybe 30 or 40 swimmers each. And, and we had like three of those in a day. So over the course of like 100 and something people at these, these clinics. And, and like it was, it was awesome. Like it just got a lot of energy from it. And just for me personally as well, like it felt great to be able to do that in front of so many people. And yeah, I was a bit nervous that you always get that if there’s, there’s bigger groups. But I really enjoy that, that part of just trying to get better and, and grow as a person. And I’ve had a similar thing surfing. So last Friday, there was really big swell and went into probably the biggest waves I’ve been. And like on the face, it was 12 foot pretty easily. And it was out there. But it’s just like, if you focus on your breathing, and I was sort of been watching, as a surf coach that I really like, and he’s talked about this, it’s like,

don’t spend all your energy paddling out, just like, just relax, you know, you’ll eventually get out there, the water will sort of make its way through, and you’ll get out there. And, and then just got to focus on your breathing. And like, just as you’re paddling into a wave, you’ve got to relax. It’s so very similar to swimming. Like if, as soon as you’re trying to muscle it, and your tense, like you’re just, you’re not going to move well or perform well. So, yeah. And then after that, I feel like, all right, I’m comfortable here. And I can start to start to do more with it. And it’s, yeah, it’s learning about those things and kind of getting the skills and the education around, what is it required to go to the next level with it? That is, that’s all part of the journey. And for you, you know, what, how have you, how have you found the last couple of weeks in that, the post race, where, you know,

things have quietened down, you go back to normal life, you haven’t been the pool yet because of a new infection. So how has that been for you on the, on the come down? Yeah, it was, it was quite weird, because I, I kind of came back and then had to hop straight back into uni, Simons and working and different things like that. And one of those people that normally drives around was like, loud music, like singing with car and stuff like that. And I almost just kind of, like had no music turned everything down. Cause I, it’s like I almost couldn’t handle the noise again. Like I was like, no, like I’ve got time to think, like I want to think again. I was like, no, maybe I’m not done with, you know, having my own thoughts kind of thing. And yeah, and it was kind of weird when I was talking to mom and dad, and I like, is it weird to kind of go straight back into life and everyone else has just been going

around doing the same thing like they normally do. And you’ve just come out of the ocean after spending five days. And I was like, yeah, cause I don’t really know how to explain. Like when people asked how did this go, I was a bit like, oh, good. Like I didn’t know how to put five days into words. And like all the thoughts coming through my head. And they’ll never understand a day though. No, no, I don’t understand what you went through. Yeah, I just couldn’t really voice what it actually was. And they’re like, oh, do you feel different? I was like, yeah, but I can’t really explain why I feel different. I just do like everything is just a little bit off to what it normally felt like beforehand. And I just kind of in my own head, I felt like a bit more like, yeah, I can do anything like this is everything’s easy. Like, and it was kind of bad because my mom and dad were like, you have to make sure that you’re not harsh with people because you’ve experienced something that’s

changed you. But other people happen. So you have to make sure that you’re still like, oh, I understand you and stuff like that. Like you can’t be harsh with people be still understanding. I was like, okay, I remember I got to get out of this like animal kind of mindset and be back to a human being when I’m like, have empathy and I care for people. I was like, I’ve completely forgot that that’s what I have to do in normal day to day life. So yeah, I kind of came back and I took me like two or three days of just kind of being this weird, like kind of zombie person walking around, like not really engaging too well. And then yeah, I slowly snapped back into it and I was like, this is how you socialize with people again. Like this is how you’re going to talk to them. Yeah, I think very weird. It’s I think part of it’s you’re in your own head that long. And you need to and you need to think only about yourself to be able to get through it. And so it takes a few days to

transition to being a social person again. And also like, I think as well for me, after you do something big in the back of your mind, you’re kind of like, you guys don’t know what I’ve done. And you feel a bit superior, you feel like you’re above everyone else in a way. And yeah, so you’ve sometimes got this attitude or this presence about you where you’re better than everyone else. And so it’s about, yeah, just like, hang on a second, let’s come back to it a little bit. Yeah, yeah. And especially for you, you know, with the event that you did across the five days, you finish your swim at two o’clock in the afternoon, go and get some, some food, you might go to the cafe, people are having their lattes, you know, like that. And it’s like, you have no idea what I’ve just been through to you. Yeah, they just don’t like, when I climbed out of the water day four, and we went to a cafe to warm me up, I looked like, like, and I actually looked like a sea

monster. My hair was everywhere. I had goggle marks, I kept hair lines. I looked like a mess and I was sitting in this like busy cafe on a Saturday morning where everyone’s, you know, out having smashed avocado and a latte. And I was sitting there and I feel like people were just looking at me because I just looked like a mess. And I was like, I was kind of like, I don’t even care what I look like right now. Like I just don’t want to get back and you’re just going to have to deal with this. And I just did, I had weird people kind of like, looking at me and I was like, if only you knew the pain I’ve been through. Yeah, I’m homeless. I can pay for this food. I was kind of like, if only you know what I’ve just been experiencing for the last two hours, then you’ll understand why I look the way I look.

Yeah, that’s right. And I was, but I was in my own head, like, beforehand I would kind of be like, oh, like, I’m so judged. Like I look so terrible and all that stuff. And I, in my head, I was like, I don’t care. Like there’s not a single part, because there’s bigger things in my head right now than what I look like when I’m out eating breakfast. Like I have to get back in some three hours for like, in some torrential water. So I was like, I don’t care if you think I look terrible. I’ve got bigger things going on in my own head. Yeah, yeah, it’s a good point to get to though. Like I found that that changed a lot for me after. Probably after having kids more than anything, whereas like I always going to come up with like, you know, food and stains and stuff on your clothes and you’re going to look tired. You’re going to, you’re going to feel like crap. And so it’s just for me, it’s like, I just don’t care what anyone thinks. You know, if I’m going down the street

and there’s like, you know, you dirty and all of that sort of stuff. And then it’s the same thing as well. Like I’ll find that after, after surfing or after swimming, like in the the ocean, like there’s been times where I’ve gone into supermarkets or into cafes and I’ve been swimming in the ocean or surfing and I’ve got like, what feels like a liter of water at my nose or in my head and you got to lean over and it can’t get that nose waterfall. Don’t judge me, I swear. But it’s funny because I feel like for a lot of, when I was in school, I, there wasn’t many people that were really, like many girls that were really into sports. Like after year 10 or 11, I think I was the only one who’s actually doing a sport. And I feel like everyone stopped because of that judgment they felt from other people. Whereas I was turning up to school stinking like chlorine with wet hair and looking like a mess. So I think because I went through register high school like that,

I wasn’t, I don’t get too phased in life anymore. I don’t feel like if people are judging me, I’m like, that’s, that’s fine. Like I’m used to it now. I’ve had people, you know, seeing in the class and going, oh, what the hell smells like the pool in here. I’m like, yeah, that’s me. Yeah. Like, sorry, I was in the pool for two hours this morning. Whereas then, yeah, I feel like sometimes it happens to the boys, but I feel like it’s more with girls. We often stop after year 10, 11, because we just feel like we’re judged too much. Whereas I wish like even now when I’m coaching girls around the age that I was when people stopped swimming, I’m like, no, keep going, like keep pushing through this. I was like, it’s going to suck at school and people are going to look at you weirdly, especially because a lot of people think it’s quite un-lady like to be very competitive. And I was the person that was like, I’m going to

beat all the boys. Like I don’t want to race the girls. I want to, I want to race the boys in the squad and at school. I was like, I’m going to beat them all. Like I don’t care. And like that competitive that my family and I, we compete doing the dishes. Like it was raising a very competitive household. So yeah. And then I’m now coaching all these girls. And I’m like, no, keep pushing through that. Like you can, you can become a really amazing swimmer or an amazing soccer player or netballer. I was like, if you just get over that kind of like, oh, I’m being judged kind of face and just remember that it doesn’t matter what people actually think is going on as long as in your head, you’re happy and you’re happy doing your sport. And I was like, there’s no reason for you to stop it yet. Yeah. Yeah. It’d be good if you could just show, show like kids in year nine, year 10, year 11 and a bit of 12 as well, but just show

them what they will feel like in after school in like the first year of university or the first year after school. It’s just like people don’t care. Like all that social, all those social dynamics of school are irrelevant. And the kids that were bullies, the ones that don’t go anywhere. Yeah. And you know, the ones that have success are probably the ones who are either getting, getting teased or, you know, smelling like chlorine. It’s that it’s, yeah, things just do not matter after school. So it’s good that especially if you’re coming from someone like yourself that’s a couple years out of school and you’re doing things like you’re doing, like that’s a, it’s a good message for them to receive from someone like you and not their mum and dad because they’re not going to get that message from mum and dad. Yeah. When, when mum and dad say to you, oh, don’t worry what kids think of you, you’re like, okay, you’ve forgotten completely what high school is like. Whereas I don’t know,

like if you find the right group of friends in school that don’t care that you, you know, you stink like chlorine or that you’re sweaty because you’ve just come from soccer training. Like no one cares about that. And even when I left high school and I went to uni, I found an amazing group of friends that have all experienced sport and all like you’re playing sport. So we get along so well. And I was like, okay, I’ve really found my people now. Like we’re all, we will understand the same thing together. I don’t have to be like, oh yeah, like I was up in the morning and then have to explain why I like to get up at 4 30am to train because no one at school really understood. Like, oh, why don’t you just sleep in if you’re tired? I’m like, no, I can’t just sleep in. I want to swim like this. Yeah. And it was just very interesting in school. I was like, no, I have to, I want to get up at 4 30. I want to swim.

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s one of the good things that my, my dad did because he was my coach for the majority of high school was that he would let the people let the kids know in the morning, like how many of your friends are getting up at this time and doing any form of exercise and are doing that. Well, yeah, seven, eight times a week, probably none of them. And so like, I think, and there’s, I’m reading a book now that’s escaped me. It’s about this. It’s a parenting book. It’s called the nothing. I’m well forgotten it, but it’s basically one of the, one of the first things it talks about is if you tell your kid that they’re, they’re special or they’re talented and that you praise them for that, then it’s going to lead to them not actually trying. But if you maybe make them feel special because of the effort and the work that they put in, that’s what’s going to make them want to do that more and then pursue that thing. And so I think it’s very much about,

it was very much about, yeah, you’re a special person because you’re choosing to get up and because you’re coming training and you’re putting in all this, this hard work, not because of, you’re just amazing because of who you are. So I know you’ve got to actually do something about it. And not just because of your achievements. Like that’s like, when I used to come home with, because I think I had that always in my head. Like, no, it’s not just about placing and it’s not about winning or coming third. It’s about like improving myself and how to come home and like people be like, oh, did you win on the weekend? I’m like, yeah, like, yeah, I came first, but like, I didn’t get a PB and I didn’t get this time. And they didn’t almost understand it. Like, yeah, but you won. I’m like, like, inside I didn’t win because I want to achieve more. Like I want to become more successful. And they, and it was very hard to kind of

yeah, relate to people at school. I was like, oh, don’t worry, like I’ll talk to my family when I get home about this. Like they all understand what I’m trying to talk about. Whereas, yeah, it always kind of, it did in year 11 and 12, I did start to feel quite lonely. I was like, nobody really understands actually what I’m trying to do, what I’m trying to achieve. Like they only just kind of look at me like, why, if you’re tired, sleep in or don’t worry about like, oh, you can come to the party, just train like another day. And I was like, no, I have to train. I have to wake up. It’s just, it’s part of my life now. There’s no way I’m stopping it yet. Yeah. And that, that’s sort of a feeling about those things is kind of something that I hope my kids have got when they’re going through school. I got, for me, I didn’t go to a heap of parties because of training and that sort of thing. I didn’t miss out. I still went to some parties and things like that. But

like, it’s just, yeah, I’m glad I didn’t like, I did not miss out on anything apart from a bit of trouble, I think. So yeah. And yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s exactly right. Like, yeah, you’re much better off having, you like, you’ve got to stay, stay busy and have something to do. So it’s, I think, yeah, that photo that your mum and dad posted at the end of the swim was just like, that was a great shot, you know, just of the family and like, probably pretty emotional six days that you went through together. But the fact you have to do it as a, as a family, I’m sure they’d be so excited about and, and just so, so proud of as well. And yeah, congratulations on, on the swim. And it was just, it was great to see you do it. And I was, you know, seeing it through the Facebook pictures, and it’s like, okay, it’s, it looks rough, but like, I’ve got no idea what you’re, what you’re going through. It’s like, I know what it’s like

when it’s rough, but it’s, it’s a different thing than actually there at one stage. And I was like, it feels choppier than it looks on that phone. I was like, are you sure you filmed that right? Like, did you do something with that video? I was like, it looks, it’s so much worse than that water than what it looks like on that phone. And I was even looking back at some of the footage. And I was like, I was like, wow, I feel like a silk for complaining. I was like, it doesn’t look that bad on the phone. And then I was like, no, it was bad. Okay, like you’re getting mouthfuls of the ocean water. Like, like it was bad. But um, yeah, it was, it was interesting because people still I don’t think fully realize that like, it was mother nature just did not want me to finish that 100 case. It was like, like, you think this is gonna like, because I was, I finished the first two days, I was like, this is going to be easy. Mother nature decided

to be like, aha, very funny. Have fun with this weather now. Let’s see how you go with this. Yeah, how do you feel looking back at it now though? Are you grateful that it was tough and you managed to push through it or looking back, would you go, actually it would have been still pretty nice if it had been five days of just sunshine and calm waters? I look back at it and I’m like, of course, like it’d be so much easy and it would have been so much greater to have it just so smooth. But I feel like the swim wouldn’t have been the swim that I did if it wasn’t choppy like that. The messy water and the conditions made kind of like made me so much stronger in the head than what it just swimming flat water would have because I had to be had to become very determined to my own head to be like, I am doing this. I don’t care what’s going to happen in the water. I have to get in this water and do this. And if it was calm each day, it would have been embraced to hop in.

And I feel like I would have started to complain about more things like it would have been like, oh, my arms are sore and my neck hurts. Whereas I almost didn’t want to complain because I was like, I was like, no, I have to be positive that the people I complained people going to be like, just hop out of the war. It’s shocking conditions anyway. So I really internalised it and I was like, no, like no complaining. These, these days are just going to have to get it done. Whereas yeah, if it was calm water, it just wouldn’t have been the same type of swim. It would have been almost too easy. I might actually start thinking about a new swim by now. But at the moment, I’m like, no more swimmers right now. I have to get over that one. It’s like a bad hangover. I just have to forget it or I don’t think about a new one. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, soon enough you’ll get the the urge to have another drink or have another swim. So yeah, I feel like that.

Yeah, like maybe we’ll give like, like another four years or so, like I did with my last swim and then I’ll completely forget the pain that I went through. And I’ll be like, Hey, this is a new idea. We’re swimming this far this time. And I feel like my mum and dad will roll their eyes again and be like, Okay, let’s go. Here we go again. Yeah, I’ve got no doubt that you’ll forget how much pain. I think it’s a great idea again, whereas I hopped out of day two or day three or something. And I looked at my parents, I was like, next time I come up with an idea like this, just remind me that I’m in pain right now, remind me how much pain this was. I was like, and maybe tell me no, whereas I feel like I’ll talk them out of it again. I’ll be like, no, no, no, I’ll be fine this time. I swear I’ll train more and I’ll I’ll prepare better and I’ll eat more food and yeah, everything like that. That’s the first thing I said to my wife when

I finished Ironman was never let me do that again. Yeah. Yeah, all these endurance athletes, I see them all the time because we like the stories in their house that we grew up with was always about endurance athletes. The things we watch on the TV is like about Elliot Kipcher, you’re breaking two hours. Like that’s the type of stuff that is happening in our house. And we talk and we praise these endurance athletes so much that I think because we praise them so much in our house, I was like, I want to be like them. Like these are our idols. So this is my mum and dad. This is who they talk about. I was like, I want to be like those people. So I think that I was like, if they can do it, I can do it like whatever we’ll get in the water and do it. And yeah. Yeah, I think I’m going to have to forget about this before I think of doing anything else again. Yeah, it’s a huge effort. So thanks for jumping on the podcast and giving us a small insight into what you actually went through

on the day. And I think what I’ll do here as well as I’ll get some of those photos and those videos and and put them into this video as well. So people have a bit of an idea and then maybe we’ll just see if we can amplify the the waves and the chop by 20% to what it was actually like there. Because it’s like when I’m filming the surf with my phone or like with the GoPro, it’s like I swear it’s so much bigger when you actually actually in it. But yeah, no, I saw that video on day four and and thought, oh my god, I can’t believe it was the worst day. I think I got like literally body surfed into that beach and my cap and my goggles came flying. So I came out of the water with my cap and goggles off. Mum and dad are like, well, are we really ready for the camera? I was like, no, I just got smashed by a wave and my cap and goggles came flying off my head. And then I was just trying to get into the ocean.

I was like, wow, the ocean is trying to kill me today. Like just get out, get home. Yeah, I reckon so that would be a good video to put in there. So thanks for being on the podcast whole. And yeah, congratulations again. 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 100km In The Bay with Hollie Buerckner appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Chung-Haun Li who has been on our Stroke Analysis Membership for 12 months. I have asked Chung-Haun to guest in our podcast to share his story and improvement for the last 12 months because he’s had a pretty significant improvement with his time and technique.

01:14 12 Months Ago
02:29 I Didn’t Know What’s Wrong With My Stroke
05:03 ” The Only Thing That I Know Is That I Am Slow And I Didn’t Know What To DO”
08:19 Improving My Balance
11:55 Improving My Stroke Rate
15:42 Your Threshold Speed Is Just A Percentage OF Your Top Speed
19:41 Planned Work Out
20:51 Frustrations

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Video analysis

I need to be very patient with myself and thanks for your patience with me. And I need to try many, many stuff to do this fine tuning thing. 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. This is episode number 173. And my guest today is someone who’s been in our stroke analysis membership for about the last 12 months. Chung Wan, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, I appreciate to be here. I asked you to come onto the podcast to share your story and your improvement over the last 12 months because you’ve had a pretty significant game and you’re already starting from a quite a good pace I think with your swimming. But really over the last, I’d say maybe four months that you’ve really started to bring your times down and bring your speed up. So I want to ask you a couple of questions

around what it was that you have changed in order to do it because I think it’s a really interesting way for people to see how someone like yourself can make such a big improvement. So in terms of where you started when you first joined, I don’t know if you sort of remember where you were about a year ago in terms of your paces and those sorts of things. I’ve had to look back in the membership to find it to see where you’re at. But do you remember where you were about 12 months ago? Well, my time 12 months ago, I think we can check in this way is that I checked my 400 meters. This is actually a bit more than seven minutes. That was my time. And now it’s somewhere like last time I talked to you is like six minutes and four seconds. So I improved the basically a whole minute for my 400 meters. Yeah, and that’s equivalent to about 15 seconds per 100 which is a big improvement. And I know one of the sets that you would do

on a regular basis is the six 200s. This is a set that I really like as well. But so six 200s with about 30 seconds resting between I think in August, your last time you posted was about three minutes 22 for each of those. And I think the recent one before I made a note was yeah, down to 307s for that set which again is, you got 15 seconds while per for 200 there. But yeah, just a really big gain. And when you first start the membership, did you know what was some of the flaws in your stroke and where you could improve? Well, actually I had no idea. To be honest, I’ve loved to swim in for my entire life. But you know before the past two decades because I actually live in different country, I just lost swimming at all. It just in the last year I started to pick it up back. And the original motivation is just to lose weight simple like that. But then check my, I asked myself, if swimming is just for losing weight,

I will lose the motivation real, real soon. So when I changed the approach, I said, hey, I start thinking about losing weight. I start to think about how to improve my swimming so I can keep motivated in myself and keep doing it. And the parent that is working because you know, I lost basically more than 50 grand in last year. So that’s also part of it to motivate it all myself is build on each other so that I can swim faster. I have more motivation to lose weight. And you know, then it sort of work out.

Yeah, so they go hand in hand, isn’t it? Like the fitter you get, the faster you get, it obviously helps with developing a building muscle and losing weight. And I think exactly right with the motivation side of it. There’s only, I find it hard to get motivated to just try and lose weight. For me, there’s gotta be something else behind it. There’s gotta be something driving me to lose weight or to get fitter, like whether that’s an event or whether that’s just wanting to get quicker or improving in something. There’s gotta be something else behind it, I find. And it sounds like you’ve found that thing for you was just trying to better your times. Cause I remember when you first joined, yeah, you said like weight loss is really number one and you just want to sort of better style and technique but you’ve really, it seems as though you’ve changed that in the last, yeah, maybe six months, nine months since you joined.

Yeah, now I only think I care about is my third shoulder workout. And actually, you know, last weekend I checked again in my short course course, a short and short course pool and the extra swimming time is in average is lower than three minutes already. It’s two minutes and 58 seconds. I was very proud of myself.

Yeah, geez, that’s great. That’s, yeah, that’s awesome. It’s such a good improvement. And I want to go into what it is you changed and looking back at your original video compared to where you’re at now and you might be able to sort of show people those differences that the first video that you sent the way I’d explain your stroke was like you were, it wasn’t sloppy, like it was quite smooth but it wasn’t well balanced. There was quite a bit of over rotation happening. There was like, it was a quite a slow cadence and the arms that in the catch in the pool they were coming under the body a lot and just not very effective or efficient compared to now where like your balance is much better your stroke rate is up. We’ve talked about like a purposeful kick as well. It’s changed in a lot of ways but the way I’d sum it up is your stroke is really tightened up. It’s become a lot more like just all heading in the right direction.

Whereas before it was just kind of a little bit like lazy in a way I guess compared to how it looks now. How would you describe it? Oh yeah, so actually before, well here is the thing. I never had a coach like ever before. So it’s the first time like somebody really like showing me or coaching me how to swing. So at the beginning actually I didn’t even know what to expect. So I just sort of like try and see how it works. And so when I see my video, okay actually to be honest every time when I saw my video I don’t really see what’s wrong is going on with me. And every time after your analysis it’s sort of like I still have a lot to improve. The only thing I know is I’m slow but I don’t know what to do. And what you said actually, you know while watching the video everything makes sense. And the start I just try to work on it. But you know the thing is that I didn’t know what to expect. So I just tried to take like a lip of faith.

I just do it and see how it works. And I think it’s working. It’s working. And you know my actually my best experience my experience that you know make me really have a big impression about this coaching is my shoulder pain. Because I didn’t need to have shoulder pain before and like half a year ago or probably longer I had a first shoulder pain. That’s my first in my life had that. So I was a bit panicked. Because you know two decades ago I tried to train myself. So I mean I stopped after a year is exactly because of the same reason the shoulder pain and then nobody coach me. I didn’t know what to do. And you tell me I still remember you tell me that my problem is during the recovery you ask me to recover like a bit wider instead of just go higher. And it helps a lot. And also you show me some workout and I actually somehow crawl through the short shoulder pain and start to keep training. That’s the part that actually you know

impress me more than just you know all these drills to make me faster gives that really the key thing to make me able to move forward more further. And for this balance thing

well to be honest I took me a real, real long time. I need to be very patient with myself and thanks for your patience with me. And I need to try many, many stuff to do this fine tuning thing here. And for this balance the first thing you showed me is that you put a pool boy between my ankles. That I’d never tried before. I was struggling. There was no fun. But after that you know I could really feel that. I can feel that. You point in your drill if I suffer that means that you’re probably picking the right drill. And so I just again I just took a dip of faith I just tried to do that and it started improving. And there’s a big improving part is the kicking. I hate myself kicking. My kicking is always slow me down. And I love to work out when I’m having a pool boy between my legs because I can just forget about my stupid legs and I can swim better. But now I think the important drill you show me is from kick. The thing is that it sounds like city thing

but you know all three of us look city. But it works. So I also I swim better now. I feel more confident. And you call it a purpose for. I don’t feel that. But I feel better with my kicks now. And now I don’t have to have this pool boy to my legs to to push myself a step before that. I need that to remind myself that I can still swim. Now I’m very comfortable when swimming with my kicking. That’s that’s a very big difference. And we saw in your videos prior to you improving your kick that the legs, particularly on your breathing stroke where it would really kick out wide and splay and increase increase your dragon. I could say it when you send in a video every time you took a breath. It was kind of like your whole body just slowed up, slowed down and then it sped up and it slowed down and it sped up. And we just we wanted to try and keep that momentum going. And so the way that they’re able to do it is just by

like doing drills with the pool boy between the between the ankles to keep the kick really small and tight. And and we worked on a number of other things as well. But it’s and now if you look at your kick, if we’re looking at you swimming towards the camera, we don’t really see your feet at all. Whereas before it was we saw the feet and the legs come out with. And so if you’re thinking from a drag perspective, it’s like, wow, there’s so much less drag happening there. So it’s no wonder that the the speeds increased as well. One of the things I like about like what you have done throughout the last couple of months is you’ve pushed me to you’ve asked good questions a bit after you’ve got an analysis back. So I’ll do an analysis and I’ll say, this is what we want to focus on. And then you’ll you’ll dig a little bit deeper on some of those things to ask, you know, to ask why, why is this the case and so on? And it’s good, you know, that not necessarily it’s not

pushback, but it’s like you’re wanting to know more about some of those things that I’ve suggested. And it’s good because it makes me think as well. It’s like and it makes me question. I need to be certain of the advice that I’m giving. So I think that’s been really good on your behalf as well. Is that it’s not just one way. It’s it’s back and forth and it seems as though, especially in the last four or five months where you’ve really improved, it seems as though that’s helped a lot because one of the things that we worked on was increasing your stroke rate a bit from where it where it was. And what what have you done to improve your stroke rate and to increase it a little bit and to do that where you’re comfortable with a faster stroke rate? OK, yeah. Before that, I want to answer this this back and forth question. The thing is that, you know, the work is for swimming is a lot easier. You just follow what coach does.

You just do it. But for adult swimming, I don’t think that it’ll work. At least that doesn’t work for me. And by the way, I’m a nerd. So everything I have to go back to physics and I feel much more comfortable about it. And swimming, I think it’s all about physics. So that’s why I need to understand the physics behind it. And that will help me to convince myself better that I have to do that and also have to convince me better. So I know how to do it. Because if you go back to books, that’s what I know. So that’s the reason that I have to, you know, dig a bit deeper. So so help me actually understand better for myself or for the reason in why you do that. For the stroke rate, the stroke rate is actually a big thing. I never thought about a stroke rate until you pointed out to me. You said that, you know, I did like 40 strokes per minute. You said that that’s very, very slow. I never thought about it. And I started to work on it.

The first thing you ask me to do is that you ask me to do this finish tempo trainer. And that, I’ve never seen that ever. And that works out. So you have just have this bit in your cap that forces you to do that. At the beginning, again, I was just surviving. I was dying. I think I probably, when I send your messages saying, you know, Brandon, I can’t breathe.

But that I wasn’t wrong. After practice and practice, I feel more comfortable about it already. And also together with the drills. Only the training is not enough. You also send me like the drills. I have to do that before the men’s set. That also works out. And that also brings me, makes me more comfortable about the faster stroke rate. And actually, you know, you said something that really you make me think is that it’s like you’re riding a bike and you just change your gear. And that’s right. When you have a slower mode, doesn’t mean you’re easier actually because you have a larger gear. Actually, you pull bigger pressure on your body to push forward. But you have a faster stroke rate. Actually, somehow it’s not, I won’t say it’s easy, but not as painful as it looks. It gets better. And the second part of it, I would say is the speed workout. Originally, you gave me three types of workout. Like aerobics and the threshold and the speed.

And, you know, I hate threshold workout. I don’t think anybody does. But, you know, like really the one pushes me. This 200 times six. I’m still doing that. So every time I does that, I just have to like talk to myself like, John, you can do it. John, you can do it. John, you can do it. Before you do the workout. But actually, honestly, I didn’t never, I didn’t really do speed workouts. Well, I just confess I didn’t really do that. And after like quite a few months ago, you emphasized that again to me, you send me this speed workout for me. I say, okay, again, John, you have to do it. And I think it’s well paid off. Because there’s another thing I didn’t think about. Also, you mentioned it in one of your videos is that, you know, your threshold speed is just a percentage of your top speed. So it means that if I can’t push my top speed third faster, there’s no way I can push my threshold speed faster. So when I did that,

that was also my first time to do that. Instead of like feeling this struggling, I feel very, very satisfied actually. After this speed workout, I feel real good. And that’s probably just because you put a very long interval for me. I think you were very nice to me that you put a very long interval. So I have time to catch my breath. And actually I feel good about like sprinting. So I love this workout. The only thing is that this workout takes longer. And then that means like, okay, only do that a weekend. So I only do this workout once per week. But it’s really nice. I feel good about it. And afterwards, I also feel more confident. Because I think it’s also about mindset. Before the mindset, you just have to set up a speed. And you’ve got code fit about if you can finish that. So you automatically lower yourself in your mind. But after this speed workout, I’m confident that actually I can keep this pace longer.

So I just do it and I made it. So yeah, there are the two parts. I will say change my swimming, also my mindset.

Yeah, that’s great feedback. I think with those threshold workouts, it’s I have a similar perspective is when you go to the pool, you’re going, oh, all right, this is gonna hurt. You know, it’s gonna hurt and you’ve got whatever it might be, 20, 30 minutes of a bit of pain ahead of you. But it’s so good for your fitness, those threshold workouts. And we saw that with your improvement in your times there. And then with the speed workouts, from my experience, most people who I’ve spoken to and coached, at least when they have first joined me, most people don’t take enough rest in their speed workouts. They’re on short intervals, so they don’t actually get to recover. And so they’re going faster than they normally would, but they’re not going fast enough. That’s, it might be at 90% of their capable speed when if they gave themselves a little bit more rest to get the heart rate down and they can reset, they can really go at maximum speed

and maximum effort with enough rest. So yes, it takes longer and you don’t get as much done. And so I think that’s often the thing that people look at and they go, I don’t really want to do that speed workout because I might only get a kilometer done in 25 minutes or whatever it might be. And I could get a kilometer and a half done. So it’s about changing the mindset with that as well. But one of the other benefits, I think of speed workouts too, is when you’re swimming at those fast speeds, you get a good sense of what’s slowing you down. Like you’ve got, you obviously swimming quicker and so you’ve got a, the drag is higher because those faster speeds. And so you become aware of where things might be falling out of place and creating more drag. So I think it’s very good for that also. Cause I think when you first joined you were, your workouts were 40, 45 minutes or so. And it was mostly a bit of a warm up and then just swimming straight for 20 minutes.

Is that correct? Yeah. So I didn’t really have a plan when every time I did a workout for the lunchtime and you set up this plan for me. I think now another thing is that I think a planned workout is very important, especially you have a different workouts. Cause you know, I also, sometimes I met people in swimming, your most of people, you know, swimming is not a really a big thing in Taiwan. So you don’t really meet people with a coach. And they, unless that’s a very big difference that I have a different workout and you know, I swim different workout every day. And I think that helps a lot. Also it helps in quite different aspects for me. It looks pretty much the same for, for, for people, you know, not swimming, but for me it really makes a lot of difference that you have a planned workout and you need to, for me, I need to put a lot of discipline to myself, like today, John, what you do is, cause I’m the, well,

when you are not really looking over my shoulder, right? So I’m the, I’m also part of the coach of myself. So I need to be disciplinary for myself. And I need to be really persistent, like, you know, because this is thin, it’s really the progress. I don’t know. It’s very slow.

And sometimes you don’t have progress like at all. For example, I, I think I also expressed some frustration to you like a healthy year ago, is that I have like, like four or five months without any improvement, practically no improvement. But I still did it pretty much the same workout like I’m doing now. I feel really frustrated and I didn’t know what to do. And now this is the mindset starts to kick in, you know, you need to have this persistence and you also need a lot of patience for yourself. Like you keep doing that a day, you’re gonna see a difference. Well, I didn’t know that. And yeah, I still kept doing that. And by the time I tried to swing different strokes like backstroke or breaststroke, so that to help me, to help myself, to help myself feel still motivated and positive about the swimming. And after like five months and suddenly, okay, but then you probably can tell me, tell more about it. I have no idea what’s going on with me, but I’m better.

Yeah, it’s, well, I think it’s great that you stuck at it. And obviously you’ve seen the results of it. And it’s, look, it’s, as a coach, I’ve worked with so many different, so many people over the years that for me as a coach, it’s hard to pick when people will have that improvement. Some people happen straight away, you know, they’ll come to a clinic and they’ll improve within the next week. And then you’ll have people who have similar to yourself, it might be like five months, six months down the track and then they’re seeing the results. So you just can’t pick it, but that’s why I try to work with people on a more long-term basis. Like who are willing to stick with it and they’re not just doing swimming for the next year and they’re done. I like people who are willing to stick with it because then we get those results whenever that tends to happen. And yeah, it’s great that it all finally clicked for you. And yeah, it’s such a difference

in terms of your before, your very first video compared to now. Like it hardly looks like the same swimming away. It looks like someone who’s swam for a much longer period of time. So congratulations on where you’ve gotten to and I’m excited for what’s to come. I don’t think you’re finished with where you can get to. I think there’s still a lot more that we can do there. And I’m looking forward to seeing what that entails in the next six to 12 months.

Thank you, appreciate that. And thank you for the interview. That actually also motivates myself. Yeah, thanks for sharing your story because I know when I’ve had previous members on, I’ve got a lot of great feedback from people who have listened to it. And for them, I think they’ve got a bit more belief about that they can become better swimmers when they hear that other people have done things like you have. So yeah, I think it’s great that you’re able to share it. So thanks very much. And yeah, looking forward to working with you in the future. Thank you, 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 1:45 to 1:30/100m in 12 Months with Chung-Haun Li appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Rebecca Hollingsworth recently swam across the Cook Straight. In this episode, she talks about how her preparation,
training, and experience on that swim.

00:40 It’s Supposed to be 23km
2:23 Training While Waiting For Another Window
5:00 Doing A Tandem Swim
8:42 Not Slowing Down
9:28 Cold Adaptation
11:08 Fuelling
14:35 After The Swim (Mental Toll)

Rebecca’s Write up

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Video analysis

I think it probably goes to show that like no two cook straight swims are the same. 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 episode 172 of the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Rebecca Hollingsworth, who’s joined me from New Zealand. And Rebecca has recently just had a successful crossing of the cook straight. So welcome and congratulations. Thank you. Great to be joining you. So this is a it’s a it’s a pretty big swim. It’s it’s I was reading your race or you’re right up on the on the swim. It’s a 23k swim, but took you 40 kilometers of swimming to get across it because of the tides. And can you give me a little bit of a background on on the challenges of the swim? Because you look at that and think 23k is okay, it’s a long distance. But how does it turn into 40k? And what’s that experience experience like?

I think it probably goes to show that like no two cook straight swims are the same. So there was a couple of swims on the Tuesday before we did our swim. And I think they did about 10 kilometers less swimming than I did.

But I think

you just the tides just do what they do. I don’t think we were expecting the tides to be that strong. But as soon as we hopped in, I think we covered about seven kilometers in that first hour and we went directly south. And then we sort of got stuck swimming on the spot for like an hour and a half before we moved north. So definitely not a straight line across that piece of water. Yeah, what do you think when you when you saw that you or you heard that you swam seven k’s in the first hour, were you thinking like this is great? Or like you knew that that was the tides doing doing that thing? Oh, it was it was quite fun. And it was awesome that we were sort of going that quickly. I think you feel it. Yeah, I think you do. Obviously, you don’t know that you’re going that fast. But when when Phil did tell us, and you know, I was like secretly hoping that it was kind of pushing us quite the way across the straight, but it was just going south really.

Yeah, yeah. And and what about the the lead up to the swim? So you were planning to do the swimming around, I think February, and you just didn’t quite get a get a window for it. So then you had to continue your training for for another month or a month and a half. And how did you go mentally just keeping that training going over the time where, you know, you just had to wait for another window? Yeah, so all my training, I sort of peaked around in mid January, like did a lot of mileage over the Christmas period. And we’re doing some really big weeks, then sort of 50 kish. And then sort of tapered for sort of white honey weekend, which in New Zealand sort of start of February, that was when our window was. And we’re all like super excited to do the swim. And it looked like there was going to be a day that we could do it. And then like the the afternoon evening before the forecast has changed and the forecast was for the sea to be getting rough in the

evening. So the swim was off. And I think Phil at the time just said, I just maintain the training, but don’t do anything crazy, like not don’t do big stuff. And so to start with us fine, I think I’ll sort of, you know, keeping it about probably about 30 k weeks. But then I sort of slowly like slackened off a bit. And it sort of ended up being quite an extended taper. But and I was also back working at that time. So, you know, it gets to be a bit of a chore, a little bit going, oh, I’ve got to keep my training going. But you know, not knowing when you’re going to swim.

Yeah, that’s that’s right. Like it’s not, it’s not like you’ve booked an Ironman or booked Rotteness channel or anything where you’ve got this set date. It’s like you’ve just got to keep it keep it ticking over. And especially with like 30 ks, you know, it’s quite a few hours a week in the pool. It’s and when you’re doing that kind of training, it’s more just for for distance than anything, isn’t it? So it’s like, it can be a sort of boring, pretty boring way to to training in many ways, where you just know you’ve got to do the distance.

I try to mix it up a little bit. So, you know, try to the pool stuff’s quite good for getting your speed. But I do like doing a good amount of training in the ocean, especially those big weeks that are getting some fun ocean swans in. But I suppose when I’m working, I’ve got quite a bit of my training happening in the pool. And so, you know, doing more stuff in the pool than in the ocean that can get a bit tedious. Yeah, you’ve got to you’ve got to do it. And I remember reading in your your write up that so you did a tandem swim, which is when someone you swim with someone else, and hopefully going at the same speed, so that you can, you know, you both get across together. And so you’ve got the one sort of support crew. And what was that? What was that sort of process like in terms of training, and wanting to be at the same speed as the the other swimmer, Karina, and and then as you were doing the swim itself.

Yeah, so I’ve I’ve previously done a tandem. So me and another friend did a tandem of Lake Topo. And that went really well. Like we’re most we’re pretty consistent through that swim. And so that gave me quite a lot of confidence to sort of give it a go with Karina. Because we don’t we’re all training together. So we sort of have a good idea of each other’s pace. I do remember though, quite early in the season, we, we did a swimmer fun. And it kind of sort of stuck stuck out for me that Karina swimming quite a bit faster. So I think she had sort of maintained a bigger mileage over over winter. And I was sort of probably a little bit late to the training game this time round. And so I think there’s not too much you can do about that. But I actually just get your training up. And then with those big training weeks, we we did a lot of swimming together. So a lot of our big swims, you know, we try to stick together. And I think that’s that’s

probably the best thing you can do to sort of try to swim consistently is actually do the training together. Yeah, definitely. That’s what I found swimming or training for right next was myself and a friend, Lysandra, we would do our big swims together in the Bay here in Melbourne. And it was just like we swim side by side the whole way. And it takes your mind off things so much more than if you’re doing it by yourself like it was it was easy doing 10, 12, 15 kilometer training swims as we were getting closer to it. Whereas like you just didn’t have to think about it. And then what about during the swim itself? So I know that, you know, halfway across a bit over that Karina started to slow down and she was getting cold and that sort of thing. Before that, was it easy? Was it? Do you feel like it was easier knowing that there was someone next to you swimming or you didn’t really think about it?

To be honest, it was quite different to any of our training swims, because obviously, when you’re swimming in the harbor, you don’t have the swell and the conditions that you’ve got in the cook straight. And so I think near the start of the swim, actually, we were, I think Karina sort of got our head of me a little bit at the start. And then with the swell, it was quite hard swimming next to each other. But I think we managed all right. And Phil could see both of us. I think we’re fine. And then I suppose as we sort of got into a ribbon a little bit, and it probably is as well sort of died down a little bit where we sort of better sort of swimming next to each other. And then like you said, sort of in the in the later part of the swim, she sort of started to drop her pace. And to start with, I just thought, oh yeah, I might just be getting faster or something. But yeah, as we sort of found out, that was a sort of startup

hypothermia, which was not not a good thing.

No, no, it’s how did you how did you go having to slow your pace? Did you start to get colder as a result? Or like what were you thinking mentally as well in terms of, or was it just like no, I’m swimming pretty, pretty quick here? So I think that the last thing that we wanted to do was for me to slow my pace. So I think Phil was quite conscious of that. And so what he got me doing was, so when Karina has slowed down quite a bit, he got me sort of swimming out from the IRB and back. So I was sort of doing this zigzag. I’m not sure for how long, probably at least in an hour, sort of doing this zigzag across Cook Street, while Karina was sort of trying to keep me to the IRB. She wasn’t doing a very good job of it at that point. But yeah. So I think if I slowed down, I would have, I would have got cold. So it’s kind of important when you’re doing a tandem that, you know, you’ve got, it does, you’ve got to think about those things, I suppose. Yeah. And

what about, did you have to do any sort of cold adaptation in your training? Or that was all in the Bay like you were swimming, no wetsuit and it was a similar temperature? Yeah, so I suppose an advantage doing Cook Street when you’re a local is that you’re sort of swimming in very similar water temperature. And both me and Karina swam through the winter, not doing long stuff, kind of just, we do, we do a squad on a Sunday morning at the Freiburg pool, which is sort of next to the beach. And then we’d sort of go out and do a short swim in the, in the harbour, sort of after our squad session. So we’re sort of regularly sort of getting in the sea over winter. And then that sort of makes it quite easy, sort of near the start of the season to start getting your mileage up in the sea and just being comfortable in the water. And Karina is actually better in the cold than me. So this kind of took me a bit by surprise that she got hypothermia.

But I think, you know, she’s written up a bit of a blog. And I think she sort of thinks it might be related to her fueling on that swim. Yeah. And that’s one of the things I can’t remember who I was speaking to about it. It might have been like a nutritionist type of diversity. And she works with a lot of channels and that sort of thing. And one of the things that she said that surprised me was that a lot of the times that when the body temperature drops, it’s a result of yeah, not enough fuel or not the right type of fuel. And so, yeah, I didn’t know that a couple of years ago before, before speaking to her. So it’s, yeah, it’s a big one. And what did you do fuel wise across the straight? How often were you fueling and what were you having? So we had our first feeds of after an hour. And then after that, it was every half an hour. And I feel like I’ve got a relatively good plan for my feeding because based on a couple of

my other big swim. So after sort of swimming, they tow poor. And I also did the scar series in Arizona in 2019. So I feel like I’ve practiced it a little bit. I have like a, I use like SIS, a sports drink. And I feel like that’s that’s sort of the base of my fueling, like most when you’re swimming, most of your fuel needs to come from your drink, I think. And then I think I was having gels roughly every every third feed. Less often than topo, because I think we overdid it in topo. I think me and me and Bri, we’re having gels every second. And it’s like after a while, we’re like, no, please, no more gels.

And then I think I just had a random collection of snacky things that I kind of just left it up to fill to sort of just give me some like snakes, like lollies. I think we had like the peanut butter sandwiches. I did. One thing I didn’t learn is that what works well in a lake doesn’t necessarily work well in the sea.

So like we had some snack balls, like you know, little foosball things. And they were just like too dry and solid out in the strait. Maybe because it wasn’t a hot day. So I hadn’t really softened. And also like in the lake, if you can kind of dunk your sandwiches in the lake and sort of eat them. You can’t really do that in the sea. So I was sort of trying to like, I think when I had my sandwich, I just used my sports drink to wash my sandwich down. And it was kind of like, yeah.

Yeah. Oh, that’s interesting. And so you feel like the, because your mouth would be so dry from the salt water anyway, that it was, that was part of the reason why those snack balls are a bit harder to get down as well. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Just the salt dynamics quite different, I think. And I, after this swim, I think after the lake swim, I felt like salty stuff. And after this swim, I just like, I demolished like nearly a container of lollies.

So I went sweet. Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s interesting. And I think you get to end of the swim as well. So I finished after 11 o’clock at night. So I was sort of swimming quite a lot in the dark. And I think Phil sort of made the call that it was probably better to keep me swimming than to stop me too often for feed. So I like barely fed in the last three hours. And so I was also very hungry when I got on the boat. So he’s the owner of lollies.

Okay, I don’t think anyone’s going to judge you for that. You’ve, you deserved at the end of a long swim like that. Jeez. And, and what about afterwards? So how long did it take you to, because I contacted you not too long after this swim, I think, and and you said like, I’d like to do the podcast. I’m just still sort of collecting my thoughts and yeah, just like winding down from the swim. So what was yeah, what happened? What was that like for you? A few days afterwards and a few weeks afterwards? Um, I feel like my so after Topor, I, I saw Topor’s in the middle of New Zealand, sort of 40 K freshwater swim. That was, I think my first big, big swim. And so I feel like the recovery after that swim was probably more about my body. I feel like it’s a lot more like took a more physical toll on me. So this time around, I feel it was probably less of a physical toll. I was actually feeling quite good after a few days. I sort of feeling a bit

recovered. But I think it took a bit of a mental toll. Like you kind of have to like your brain just tries to process everything that happens. And so you just like have to like re relive, I guess you’re the swim over and over again, like, you try to just process all when this happened and this happened and this happened. And also I think because the swim was so event full, like it was so unexpected, I wasn’t expecting to be out there for 12 hours. And what were you expecting? How long were you thinking or planning on? Oh, I think around eight hours. Right, that’s a lot longer. We’ve got a normal, I don’t think there is normal on the cook straight. But if we’ve got one of the friendlier days in the cook straight, I think it would have been more eight hours. So I think just lots happened in that swim. And so I think you, you know, your brain guy just needs to process it. And then you also find yourself like having to catch up on sleep and

and whatnot. But that was probably more the recovery for me. Just getting getting my head around it. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, John John Hancock, who I had on the previous podcast, he kind of spoke about a similar thing. It’s like, yeah, physically, he was pretty good after his his lake swim. But it’s more the it’s more the mental side of things that you really have to be mindful of. Yeah, looking out for and especially when it is such a like such a big day and longer than what you had planned and

yeah, and sort of things not not going to plan as well as you would like in terms of conditions and all that sort of stuff like it’s, it can certainly be a lot to process. So what how you now a few weeks after the swim, because one of the things that John mentioned that he’d heard coaches and athletes talk about is the like the mental come down after a big, big event like that. And you’ve done quite a few big swims as well. Have you experienced that? Yeah, that sort of downward part of it and where you’re at at the moment with it?

And I think I’m pretty good on that side of things. I I’ve only really been doing

short little swims, but I’m going to go up and do go up to Auckland and do the Rangatoto swim this weekend is a bit of the end of season sort of sort of fun swim. I think it helps that I have other swims sort of in my sort of future. So this wasn’t like the be all end all, although my next swim is planning to be the English Channel. So I don’t actually know if I’ll ever get actually get overseas for that. But hopefully that next year. I think that it’s probably harder after topo because

I think so the topo swim was ended January and I had this idea that I would have chill out for a little bit and then just do some fun swims at the end of season, like sort of go up and do like the marathon swim in Auckland. But then COVID hit and then all of a sudden it’s like you can’t do any swimming. So we had quite a hard lockdown. It was like five weeks of no swimming.

And so I think it sort of went from I’ve done this really big swim to actually I’m not allowed to swim. Yeah, so I think that sort of hit me quite like more of a shock than what COVID might have been otherwise. So yeah, but I feel like I’ve done a few big swims now that I don’t think I have that big come down. But you never know. I’ve still got only three weeks from the swim now. Yeah. Oh, look, I hope you hope you don’t go through it. And it’s I mean one of the positive things about like you got to do the swim is that with Phil, who was the support over there and with all the boats and everything like it’s it’s a swim that’s just booked up for like it was like three years ahead or four years ahead or something like there’s so much demand to cook straight. Now that’s part of the Ocean Seven series that it’s like it’s almost impossible for the Kiwis to jump in and do it. And and that’s I guess one of the benefits of having

no no outside visitors in New Zealand at the moment is there was windows for Kiwis to do the lake swim and to do cook straight and so you managed to to secure it. And was there something that you were prior to COVID that you had thought about or planning?

I I kind of had it as my I’ll do it one day list.

So not that I have this. But you know, it was in the back of my mind that one day I’ll do the straight. I need I need to do the cook straight. So I get the freedom of the fairies. So that’s if you swim the cook straight, you don’t have to pay for the fairies over in South Ireland. Is that really a thing? Yeah, that’s a thing. That’s awesome. I had no idea. Most of the people who get it are international people who have been just amusing it.

Yeah. So I kind of knew that I wanted to do it one day. But you know, logistically, it’s I knew that, you know, Phil’s always busy. And if I did do it, I’d be on a season where I had to be a floater. So it’ll just like prepared to go at any time.

So I wasn’t in a big rush. So when COVID came about, it was probably more opportunistic. I know I had to delay. I was going to go to the do my English Channel in 2021, but I pushed that out a year. So by pushing that out, I decided to I’ve got to have another goal there. So cook straight was quite a good goal. And then sort of Karina was so Karina was on the support crew for the TOEFL swim that I did. And so she was kind of she got kind of motivated by being on a support crew. And I think she was, oh, yeah, I’m quite keen to cook straight it too. So we’re having those conversations. Oh, I wonder if Phil will take a tandem and cook straight. So we sort of tested it out. And yeah, he took us. But I’m not sure if you’ll take another tandem. So was that the first tandem across the the strike? I think there’s been others. But I think he’s just generally a bit reluctant because I think what our swim shows is even if you have quite a similar pace,

swimmers, you know, stuff can happen. Yeah. And then you’ve got Phil having to look out for two swimmers, not one. And I think it just sort of it’s a bit more of a handful for him. Yeah, yeah. And it’s like a big it’s a big responsibility with what with what can happen in the in the cold sea and and when people push themselves to the extremes of what they’re physically capable as well. So he’s he’s such a good person to have in your corner doing that sort of stuff. So there’s no one who no one else would trust more than Phil to look out for that stuff. And he says it how it is as well, which is which is great. And reading your write up to that he the way that you think he got your he motivated you a bit to maybe ramp up your training or ramp up your speed was he said something about being able to swim four kilometres an hour for for the cooks. Right. Can talk to me about like that off-handed comment that was probably strategic

on his part. Oh, yes. So we met up before Christmas. And I hear sort of, oh, yeah, this is how the swim’s going to go. You know, you’ve got to swim four K an hour and I was thinking to myself, oh, no, I’m not a four K an hour swim. But I think he’s got this a bit wrong. But it’s sort of, you know, laid out a good bit of a challenge for our training to go, OK, what is the speed? We’ve got to try it. And so I think I did. I did actually increase my pace, I think, and all that doing that that training and sort of, yeah, it’s good sort of motivator, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, that’s it. Oh, thanks. Thanks so much for jumping on the podcast and sharing sharing this. And I think we’ve probably had, I’m thinking in terms of guests, like maybe majority New Zealanders like yourself had a lot of New Zealand guests talking about these sorts of swims and it’s it’s just such a good swimming community over there. And and the fact that you’re

able to successfully swim across the Cook Strait is no small achievement because it’s such a like a twenty three K, but the there’s so much water moving through there. You get all the swells going through. It’s a it’s a pretty tumultuous piece of piece of water. And what I would like, what I love sort of seeing or looking at is when you look on a map and you can point I’ve swum from here to here like it’s a it’s a pretty cool achievement. And one of the ones that I did, which is a short swim, it’s not not necessarily a hard one, but there’s the Port Phillip Bay. There’s the entrance there to the Bay in Melbourne. And one of the swims that a friend of mine grant see the runs is called the Rip Swim. So it’s like a I think it’s maybe three K across across the heads there. And it’s like it’s one of the most dangerous like shipping stretches in the world in terms of ships. I don’t know having going off course and that sort of thing.

So I look at that on the map and go, that’s awesome. I swum from there to there across these two heads. But it pals in comparison to looking at the two islands in New Zealand going, I swum from there to there. So yeah, congratulations. It’s quite funny because with our route, we we ended up going as far north as these little islands called the brothers. And so most people don’t know about the brothers unless they know about the Cook Strait. And one of my work colleagues is often out in the Cook Strait. And when she found out that we went to the brothers, she sort of went home told her husband, they went to the brothers because apparently they’re quite notorious. Like she doesn’t even go there in a boat. Really? Oh my God. Now I can look on the map and go all the way up to those islands. Yeah, two, yeah, two for one. That’s I did see that island on the on the course map that you had. I wasn’t sure what they are or what they were.

But and you got there in what probably pretty short amount of time by the look of it with with the tide going there. But I mean, you probably look out to see and see the brothers and go, man, that’s a that’s a long way already to swim. And then you only have another 30 something case to go. That was that was probably three quarters in the brothers. So that was Oh, was it OK? Yeah, so, yes. So I was looking at the the other direction. Yeah, it was the northernmost part. So we kind of went south first and then the northernmost part of our route was the brothers and then it kind of got dark after that. Yeah, gotcha. I went to South. Karina hopped out then. Well, thanks again for being on the podcast and yeah, good luck for whatever the next adventure is for you. And thank you. Yeah, I’m sure people listen to this. There are thinking you’re probably crazy, but there are a lot of people who probably want to do something just as crazy.

So yeah, thanks again. And well done. So thank you. Lovely to talk to 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 Swimming Between New Zealand’s North And South Island With Rebecca Hollingsworth appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is John Hancock, the most recent person who successfully completed the Lake Taupo swim.

00:46 Lake Taupo
02:29 Deciding To Cross Lake Taupo and How Long is The Preparation
05:34 Is 2 Month Preparation Enough?
08:27 “As Long As You Can Keep Moving, You Will Get There”
09:53 Recovery
12:16 Thoughts While for 14 Hours
16:49 Positivity v.s. Dark Thoughts During The Swim
23:39 After The Swim
28:39 Swimming With Squad

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Freestyle Clinics Around Australia

And he said, no, no, no. It’s completely the opposite. I want you swimming in a pool. I want you swimming with the pace clock I want you on times the whole time because people who swim open water all the time They get really lethargic and they just drop into this sort of zombie zone And the art of marathon swimming is about maintaining pace 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 episode number 171 of the effortless swim podcast. My guest today is the man himself, John Hancock who’s the most recent person to Successfully complete the Lake Taupo swim. So John first of all congratulations and welcome. Oh, cheers, Brent So for those that that haven’t heard of Lake Taupo and that this one that you’ve done Can you give a few details on what it is that you did last weekend? Yeah, so Taupo is the is the lake in the center of the North Island of New Zealand. So if you look at Look at map of New Zealand The North Island looks like a bagel and it’s got a big hole in the middle And it’s the cold era of an extinct extremely large volcano Which is it’s about 40 kilometers in diameter So the swim is the is the longest axis of the lake So it goes from the bottom sort of left hand corner to the top right hand corner Which is Taupo township Yeah, sort of holiday resort And it’s a it’s a freshwater swim around was it 21 22 degrees for you. You did it. Yeah, that’s right

so the lakes freshwater and I think when I did it it was just just under 20 degrees according to the You know monitoring thing, but I mean obviously it varies in different parts of the lake But but pretty warm really it’s the end of the New Zealand summer So the the lake sort of warm up very slowly through the summer. So even though The air’s starting to cool down a bit the lakes are still holding their temperature for another another three or four weeks and in terms of the swim, this is we’ve had a friend of yours Vicki Tate on the podcast as well who did the swim probably two years ago now every time is a little bit blurred, but it’s a it’s a amazing location and I’m guessing that swim and Cook straighter sort of tour the the main long-distance swims that you can do in New Zealand there and When was it that you decided to do the swim into to train for it and how long was that preparation for you?

Well, I mean I got the idea from Vicki actually So I looked her up for you Brent. So she was episode 116 in June 2018. That’s when you interviewed her Wow, they nearly three years ago. That’s incredible, huh? And I mean Vicki’s a really inspiring person because she hasn’t got a background as a competitive swimmer So she got into it as an adult having got very injured playing football And yet, you know, this is an amazing Achievement so it’s sort of been at the back of my mind and then last summer So February 2020 I crewed for a couple of friends mine and they did a tandem swim on the lake So this is extremely unusual So you takes two people who know each other very very well and can swim at exactly the same pace So they they did this tandem crossing and they swam stroke for stroke for 14 hours Across the lake. Yeah, so I was one of the feeders for that and it was pretty You know pretty inspiring really and I thought well, maybe I should be thinking about this a little bit more having previously thought

There’s no way I’d ever be able to do anything like that And then the opportunity really came about a month later because We’ll probably talk about Phil Rush who you’ve also had on the podcast before so Phil is the Legend ultramarathon swimmer who now prepares people to swim cook straight and support them on their crossings But during the summers when the tides aren’t right for cook straight He’ll help people get across Lake Topor and and usually his book is completely full of international swimmers You know the cook straight crossing in particular. It’s so famous now He has people coming from all over the world as part of this ocean seven. There are seven major

Marathon swims But of course this year in New Zealand’s borders have been closed all year. We still have closed borders So it’s not great for Phil’s business, but it does mean that he’s had a lot more time for New Zealand swimmers wanting to do things so we did vaguely talk about it last year, but it was

Sort of coming out of the winter when I realized that we couldn’t be going anywhere overseas anytime soon That I said to him. I was pretty keen to give it a go

but I was wife and I did a Did a big triathlon camp in the second half of last year So I was actually spent the whole of the second half last year cycling actually trying to get my cycling back up to snuff So I didn’t have very much time to to train for swimming So I didn’t really get stuck into it until the Christmas holidays to be honest when we were down down south in Lake Monica Um, and even that was a bit sporadic So I’d say I probably did it. I mean it did two two month block of really focused and intense training But coming off the back of a lot of endurance work, but not massive swimming volumes really

And and how’d you find you held up during the the swim so the swim took you 14 hours roughly and 40k swim and Did you so too much to swim people might think well, that’s that’s not a huge block of of swimming but obviously you had that that base there and you you’ve You’ve continued to swim for you know for a long time. Haven’t you like you’ve got You’ve got a lot of years behind you Yeah, yeah as a swimmer or as an athlete And so how did you go with that that two months of preparation? Do you feel like you could have done with more? It was it obviously got you through it. Um, what was that like for you during the yeah? Well, I When we got back from Christmas holidays, I had a sit down with Phil and I said what do I what do I need to do in order to Be ready for this Um, he said it’s easy. I just want you to do 350k weeks at which point I sort of That’s that’s great Yes, that’s like that’s a lot Um, and I thought that’s insane. I mean that’s like training for an iron man

volume Just swimming. Um, because if you think about it three k’s an hour Doing 50 k’s that’s 17 hours swimming a week plus getting to wherever you’re going and coming back. I mean that’s like a job Um, but I mean, you know what? It’s like doing iron man. You just need to be super organized You need to look at your calendar. You need to try and work out how to synchronize things

You know sort of Reduce the number of trips to go swimming So if you’re doing squad you need to try and back up and then do another hour afterwards to try and double the Distance that you’re doing or something like that um Did some massive massive swims at the weekend to to really try and put the volume up and I mean the thing Psychologically that made it for me was when we got to the end of that first week doing 50 k and I actually didn’t feel that bad You know my arms hadn’t fallen off and I was still managing to keep going I was still managing to swim sort of well rather than just sort of grovel through it Um, and then I had a rest day and then rolled into the next week and that week went well And then suddenly thought oh, I’ve only got one more week like this to go. Um Rolled into the third week and by the end of it. I was starting to feel much more Confident about my ability to do that um And interestingly, I’m just looking at the volumes

The week I did the topo swim, which is 40 k as you’ve said I only actually did 9 k in the week coming up to it just sort of trying to stay sharp So I actually did a lower volume that week than I have done in all these sort of big build-up weeks And I I do wonder a little bit of it. Well, I mean it feels quite sort of hard to task master But some of it was psychological. I think he was trying to Give me a challenge that I found a bit intimidating Put me in a position where I could be successful with that and then, you know It actually helps you recalibrate what doing something like a 40 k swim is like because I mean, I think people need to understand It’s nowhere near as difficult doing something like that than it is doing one of these big open water swims

Because obviously it’s a lake So although there are a couple of areas where there are currents due to Streams coming in and rivers coming out of it. They’re not that strong Whereas, you know, when you do one of the big ocean crossings like cook straight or furbo straight or something like that There are points where you’re battling against incredibly strong currents and tides And in some cases people never quite finish because they can’t swim fast enough to get over the tides But that’s that’s really not the case here. I mean as long as the vicki did so to me She said as long as you can keep moving you’ll get there, you know, it might take a while

Just got to keep on battling Yeah, it always reminds me of that The swimmer that phil had doing the cook straight and I can’t remember how long it was battling against the current but it was just It was for a very long time and then he ended up like missing the last like a rock or bit of land And just got swept past it and then because the current’s so strong You’re done. You can’t get back in and missed it by like 10 meters or something crazy. So I guess that’s a good thing about the the lake swim, but that said it’s certainly not an easy thing to do But amazing that you’re able to do it and in such a short space of times in terms of a training block It’s um, it’s quite impressive and how do shoulders hold up and what did you do for Like recovery and that sort of thing or was it just You felt good for that that three or four weeks leading into it. Yeah, yeah, um, I mean

I think when you were talking to vicki you talked about your first 10k when you were going into your rock Swim and how you were really wrecked after that and then you know On the time you’ve done a few more you sort of get used to it and it was very like that, you know, the the first 10k swim I did I thought oh god, I mean, you know, this is This is a red it’s a nobody done a quarter. How am I going to get used to it? But it’s amazing how quickly your body adapts. Um, yeah, and I suppose You know endurance space is pretty big. You know, I did six years doing Ironman quite seriously and you get very very used to tolerating Extremely high volumes of this very low level of effort or certainly low level of effort at my level of performance

So I mean I did I did have problems not problems, but I did, you know, my upper back got very very tight. Um I mean, I’ve always been quite obsessive about regular massage and I try to stretch not that well

But but it was particularly just building the volumes up quite gradually. So I sort of went from doing um, sort of 20 care week 25 30 35 And I think I didn’t have a rest week until I’d got up to 40 then I had one week off and then I had the three weeks at 50 um and There was one week where I’d got incredibly uncomfortable and I took um Anti-inflammatories to cope with it and uh, I was talking to Phil and I said oh, you know, how am I going to cope? You know, we’re doing something that’s so much longer and he said well The first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to stop taking anti-inflammatories when we’re training We want to punish the body now and we can worry about pain relief when we’re doing the swim So again, that was I mean partly physical, but I think it was partly mental that um, you know to have done all that volume Without taking any ibuprofen or anything like that and to know that Even if when you get in you feel incredibly tight and stiff after about 20 minutes half an hour

You do amazingly loosen up and you can swim properly You’re not swimming sort of lopsided or anything um But again to know that it does mean that when you’re actually doing the swim and things start hurting and niggling and stuff like that You know that you can swim through it. So long as you don’t over over overwork things and what about during the swim so 14 hours is a very long time to be you in the water and I know you’ve got the support crew there Feeding and everything but what was it liking your head across that 14 hours? What was it? What were your Thoughts as you were progressing through the swim. Yeah, I mean and

We did talk about this a lot beforehand. I mean, I’ve got quite a busy head as well So I think Phil was worried that that that would be the thing that would catch me out More than the the physical side of it. So I spent a lot of time practicing stuff Um, uh last year I did a hilarious swim in the lower south island which goes from A little township called tianao which is quite near

Milford Sound the famous Sort of tourist area and you swim across a lake For about an hour and then you swim down a river. So it’s 24k down a river at about 12 kilometers an hour So it’s the fastest. It’s the fastest 24k you’ll ever do And then you pop out at the end of the river and you think sweet. We’re there Um, and I think it’s about another 12k from the mouth of the river to the next township So that that 12k which took more than four hours I was already starting to deal with these demons of you know, what do you do? You know and just and I started retracing routes in my head. I found um I was pretending I was driving from where I live in wellington up to topo because uh, you know It’s a route. We do quite a lot and and and you’re just trying to step your way through it And um, I found that work really well And then I was talking to phil about this and he said oh, that’s interesting when I did my ultramarathon swimming when I was

Competitive, um, I used to retrace my dustbin route So phil used to be a dustbin collector in deniden and he had this route that he did which took about three hours So he’d retrace it and just kept each each dustbin along the way And he said but the trouble is it only takes three hours So if you’re doing a 14 hour swim, you need a lot of other things to think about so, um One of the you’d like this actually so one of the things I I did getting ready for this topo swim I was trying to think of other Things I could replay in my mind to give me something to focus on and take my mind off Sort of wandering thoughts. So I used I thought about places. I used to go running regularly where I knew the route um, and when I was a student in the uk, I had a couple of long runs that I used to do uh from University and I went to google maps and got down on to street view and I retraced them About two weeks before I did the swim

So I’d actually Revisualized everything and I’d forgotten quite a lot of the detail But on the day it was marvelous because it was all it was all still there. It’s incredible 30 years on You know it all comes flooding back um, and that that kept me going for hours and hours and hours but um Coach Brenton, you’ll be very pleased to know that the other thing I spent a lot of time thinking about was my swimming I was thinking quite a lot about my catch. I was thinking about not shutting the door at the back and

Closing possible hips and everything. Um, yeah, so I did I did think about technique quite a lot And I was sort of thinking about things coaches had said to me

In the past particularly we had one moment where I mean it was a perfect day really very very flat conditions but You start very early in the morning because it’s such a long day and generally the wind gets up in the afternoon so Normally Phil will start people at sort of three four o’clock in the morning We and it’s a bit of a trade-off between starting early enough that you finish early And starting so early that you get really cold because of course, you know before the sun gets up It’s that much colder. So we started at 4 30 because it was quite a cold night Um, and we were swimming along and it was all going quite well Forecast had been brilliant No wind some came up and then this amazing chop built up and I thought oh god, what’s going on here? This is going to be pretty grim if it’s like this for the next 10 hours Um, and it was uh, it was the morning breeze So this was the sun warming the side the the land on the side of the lake and you get this sort of offshore breeze

But it was just enough to break the water up And so that really really forced me to concentrate on technique just to try and stay you know Like a broom handle Really concentrate on my catch and everything and it’s incredible. How long you can concentrate on your stroke because you’ve you’ve always got another stroke to do and yeah That’s uh, that’s really interesting and um Were there any points through the race where you or through the race through the swim where you where you felt like You may not be able to do it or were you feeling pretty positive the whole way through because I remember With rot nests and I was starting to get hypothermia. So I think that was the main cause of me just really starting to You know hurt through it. Um, but I was just like I’ve got I had about I know Five six k’s to go and I was just like I wanted to get out and I had to tell myself that I was so lucky to be here and just like

Yeah, convinced myself uh that that I was Fortunate to be to be doing this thing as much as I was hating it So what were you like throughout the the swim in terms of your positivity or um dark thoughts where we’re with with that Oh pretty pretty positive Brent. I think um

I mean, I’m a very big believer in surrounding yourself with people who want you to be successful So I’ve spent the whole time building up, you know, I’ve got great people around me We’ve got a great community in Wellington of people um, so I hadn’t really had any

Negative people in my head Building up into it and you know what we were talking about earlier a field sort of making me do some preparation Which convinced me that I could do it physically Um, and and it and it is an easy swim, right? It’s not that, you know, awful things happened I mean there were there were two moments where I almost lost my balance So one of them was this moment where it got very choppy just after dawn And I hadn’t anticipated that and it sort of just caught me by surprise a bit Um, and I think if that had gone on for another sort of six or seven hours I think I would have found that quite hard and there was another moment when um, you You’re about 30 35 k into the swim and there’s a point It’s really the first feature that you’ve seen for about 15 kilometers And there’s actually quite a strong current coming off the point Which I remember from last year when I was crewing for these friends

But I completely forgotten about it and we were swimming along and I’d done all the maths in my head Of how long it was going to take to get there and nothing was happening And I was sort of thinking what’s going on And uh at one of the feeding stops. So I said, you know, I’m behind what’s sort of my technique gone wrong And Phil said no, no, this is the current you just got to Just gotta swim through it and then you’ll be fine really get on the other side of it And again, I think it was just the fact I hadn’t anticipated that so I’d almost got a little bit rose-tinted in the way I thought away through the swim Um, but in terms of the discomfort and the fatigue and you know, sort of The demons in your head and everything and when I think I prepared quite well for that So I mean it really wasn’t any point where I thought I wasn’t going to manage to do it um And I suppose again, that’s not unlike my Ironman races, you know, I mean I never did particularly well

But I was never really thinking I wasn’t going to finish. It was more a question of how how good a job I’d make of it

Yeah, yeah, that’s interesting. Well, that’s um, it’s really good to hear and you’re very um, you know When you talk about you make it sound like It’s this thing you just did on the the weekend and it’s uh, yeah Less of a deal than I think it really is but um, you know, I think that’s all part of your personality and your character and um, because I remember Well, and you’ll remember this too obviously is the uh, the frog challenge that we did

Run so this was I’m going to get my dates wrong here, but I’m going to say like 2016 maybe

Yeah

And yeah, so we did this this swim run race down I think it was rosebud it started from down in the Mornington Peninsula and um, it just It’s it it took all day long and it was ended up being Like 30 something k of running and nearly 10 k of well waiting through the water and a little bit of swimming because it was pretty low tight, I think um, but um, yeah just chipped away at it and yeah, eventually eventually got there in the end and um, yeah just always um, had a really positive about About the the race and and all of it and so yeah, just get on with the job and and go about it So I can see how that can translate to to the lake swim. So yeah That I remember that that race as well where I had to catch a flight to Perth Um And so we came in we finished and I had to get changed in five minutes and then head to the airport And I think I made my flight by about five minutes as well. So we timed it perfectly. We couldn’t have done any better

We were pioneers Brendan that was the that was the first swim run event in the southern hemisphere Because it’s like quite mainstream on this Brecker and all that stuff And I remember I posted something on facebook about swim run because I’ve just found out about it in You know all these people in northern europe and everything and I’ll say this sounds awesome But there’s nothing happening and you posted back to me and said, oh, no, this is a vent organizer in melbourne organizing something And so I wrote back to you and I said, great. What are you doing on december?

Let’s go Yeah, that was a lot of fun, but it was a long way, wasn’t it? But uh, yeah, I did another swim run race actually Oh, it was about three years ago in norway called rockman And uh, it was just so physically hard like, you know, because it must be the way norwegians think about things But I mean the running was just impossible. I mean you just couldn’t run unless you’re superman So we had this moment where we were running along and it’s like, okay Well, that’s an iron man finished and we’ve still got another three hours to go. So you just keep on trucking through it Yeah, it’s just it’s just the but you listen to some of these ultra Distance swimmers and you know what I did is absolutely nothing So, um, you know in the interview he did with you phil rush talks about doing these Two and three way crossings of the english channel Um, and he talks about them being lapsed. So you do one lap or two laps or whatever

But like was it last year or the year before where this incredible woman, sarah tombins Did a four-way crossing of the english channel and I think she was swimming for something like 60 hours I mean that makes yeah, that’s right. Yeah completely nothing So it’s just about how you approach these things Yeah, that’s right. It’s all about perspective, isn’t it? So But well, it’s um, oh, congratulations on on the swim. It’s uh, I think it’s a huge achievement and I’m sure you’re proud of what you’ve done and just add it to the the list of crazy events that you’ve you’ve done and um, I don’t I don’t want to ask what’s next because it’s probably going to just continue to um, you know progressively get harder and more challenging and and more out there, but um Is it you’re talking to um feel the other day, um, and we just we’re talking about this before the call was Talking about what it’s going to be like after the swim

And I think this is this happens with any sort of long-distance event or something that you train for for a long time Uh, is you’re going to have this big high and then you’re going to have Um, sorry, brand. I just lost my wi-fi there. I’ve got I’ve got talking to fill I’ve got talking to fill the other day and then I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint briefly No, that’s right. Um, so when you were talking to fill the other day about what’s going to happen after the swim So you’ve got this big high. Um, yep after the swim everyone wants to to talk to you about it and Um, and then afterwards it’s going to be this sort of quiet period And uh, can you talk a little bit about what feel was mentioning to you and um, what you’re sort of expecting? In the next few weeks So I said to him, you know, how do you recover and everything because I was thinking the whole physical recovery is probably quite hard Um, and he said no, you’ll be fine. Actually, and um, and he was right

I mean the day after the swim. I was incredibly stiff particularly in my um upper back and

Arms but actually within a day or two I was I was okay And I just about managed to swim with a little bit of discomfort Um, and then sort of late last week Um, I started getting incredibly tired. Uh, and it’s almost like the new body Breathing this big sigh of relief But Phil said to me so you’ll get through that and then your body will come right and you’ll feel right as rain And then you’ll crash mentally and what’s going on is that? You get loads of stimulus and feedback from everyone because everybody’s very excited by this and they want to know what you’ve done and everyone’s telling you Positive things and then that passes and then you sort of drop into this sort of black hole

Sort of no feedback. So you need to be ready for that. You need to make sure you’ve got stuff to

Sort of stimulate you and and and keep you pushing forward So that hasn’t happened to me yet I mean, I suppose that’s a bit like they talk about the sort of post iron man depression syndrome Don’t they that you know people have had this incredible run into iron man And it just occupies every waking minute and then you have this huge Stimulation of doing the event and after the event and then there’s sort of you know, nothing and you need to you need to replace it with something constructive Yeah, so I’m I’m gonna I suppose having done lots of things like that before I’m sort of ready ready for that. Keep keep busy Yeah Yeah, and I think I mean are you swimming with a squad as well over there or Yeah, this is like the effortless swimming podcast greatest hits my interview brenton because

We’ve talked about vicki and we’ve talked about phil People really should listen to phil’s interview actually if they want an idea of what ultra marathon swimming is all about You know this this man When I wrote my race report, I got some of his records wrong by 10 years. So phil, um, he’s in the right direction But

Um, no, no, it’s the opposite. So phil still holds the two and three way speed records for swimming the english channel And he’s held held held those records. I wrote 30 24 years. It’s 34 years. Those records have stood for Um, how old are you brenton? 33 Phil broke those records a year before you were born and no one’s got even close Um to them. So so phil has a squad of swimmers, um in wellington. We train on a sunday morning um, and You know, you talk to vicki about the number of people who’ve done this topo Swim, I think she said it was under 100. It’s actually 60 people have done it now with me Um, so so it’s quite an unusual thing to have done But I worked out that 10 of the 60 people who swam this swim swim with my squad. So it’s It’s a very distorted perspective of what’s normal in the world Yeah, so so phil has this sort of rather unique squad And then during the week I swim with gary hurring. So he’s another one of your effortless swimming fano

Who you’ve had on twice Actually, uh, when I was looking at all up. Um, yeah, it’s a gary x olympian. So gary was the uh, the national high performance coach For swimming new zealand. Um, and he went to the los angeles olympics himself. So he’s a super competitive pool swimmer

And uh, he’s he’s been great actually because I mean, I think you’d be the first to say he’s not an open water swimming guy That’s that’s phil’s gig. Um, but that’s the squad and so I mean, we didn’t really adapt anything I was doing But he and the team have been very supportive at helping me sort of integrate the squad swimming with With all the training I was doing around that And I actually found training with the squad was really helpful, um, I think when I was talking to phil about getting ready I’d sort of assumed that you just need to spend hours and hours and hours swimming in the harbour on your own Um, and he said no, no, no, it’s completely the opposite. I want you swimming in a pool I want you swimming with the pace clock. I want you on times the whole time Because people who swim open water all the time they get really lethargic and they just drop into this sort of zombie zone And the art of marathon swimming is about maintaining pace

And if you listen to the interview with phil that you did he talks it’s exactly the same language He talks about maintaining pace and for him I think it was very important because when you’re doing these crossings you need to be able to swim ahead of the tide So you’ve got to get over in however long it takes for the tide to turn Otherwise suddenly you discover that you’re fighting it before you’ve got to the other side So being able to start quickly and then keep it keep on going And actually squad swimming is really great for swimming quickly because you know you’ve got other people And you’ve got a coach barking at you and you’ve got gold times and you’ve got stuff like that So, I mean even though it sounds very non specific for doing something like that That was actually quite an important part of my of my build up. I’d say that swimming with the squads

Yeah, and it’s such a it’s such a good swimming community there in in Wellington and I think having that That squad and that support there afterwards as well Makes that transition to post-race so much easier to to do and yeah, it’s

It’s because you came to how weak was it the very first one. I was trying to think of this

Yeah, 15 and 16 I think it was And and since then had such a big contingent of Wellington swimmers come and do camps of all sorts and Developing a relationship with Phil and with with Gary’s been fantastic. So Got a yeah got a soft spot in my heart for for Wellington and yeah, just really Just just love that the group over there. So it’s a fantastic grid to be a part of

Yeah, they’ve all said they’re looking forward to you organizing some more camps in Tanyapura and Nusa and Hawaii So Gary was saying this morning tell Brenton he needs to get his finger out and organize the

Small problem is It’s real difficult to get him back into New Zealand when you’ve been overseas, but It’s it’s good here Yeah, same thing is I’m hoping they open this uh trans

Trans-Tasi border Which would be great. So yeah, I was I was playing to run a Nusa camp

In May, but I’m just like, oh, I don’t know like I don’t know if it’s going to be open and um, I I don’t really want to run it without the New Zealand border being opened because um, I think we’ll have a big contingent of Kiwis coming over and I’d like Yeah, Gary to come over and coach and that sort of thing too. So wait, so it happens But um, I’ll send my letter to my local MP and that will get tossed in the bin But I’ll feel like I’ve done my part at the very least so Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. John. It’s been great having you on and Yeah, congratulations. It’s it’s awesome to hear that you you did the swim I didn’t know your training for it. So when I saw that you posted I think two days before it This is this is how you can track me for the swim. It’s awesome. Let’s go It’s uh, that’s what you do it. So yeah, congratulations Oh, brilliant. Cheers Brent. Nice to see you again Thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast

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

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In this episode, I want to talk about making your swimming effortless. I have been watching about Lionel Sanders, a professional triathlete has put up in his swimming recently which he has titled “Stop Sucking At Swimming” and he is basically trying to improve his swimming to be a front pack swimmer in his swim and not lose so much ground on his swim. It has been interesting hearing him talk about the things that he is going through and how he is going to change his mindset and his approach to swimming.

00:56 Try Less To Go Faster
02:35 Try This The Next Time You Are In The Pool
04:22 Effortless Swimming?
05:16 Not Going To Happen Every Time
05:37 Do A Longer Warm-Up
06:36 Sets That Progressively Get Quicker
08:16 Get Your Technique Looked At And Be Consistent

Some of my best races have felt the easiest in a way. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to episode number 170 of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. In this episode, I wanna talk about making your swimming effortless. When you’re swimming well, that’s how it should feel. And I’ve been watching, there’s some videos at Lionel Sand, it’s a professional triathlete, has put up on his swimming recently, which he’s titled Stop Sucking at Swimming. And it’s been really entertaining. And I’m going to do a YouTube video breaking this down. And he’s basically just, he’s trying to improve his swimming to be a front pack swimmer and not lose so much ground on his swim. It’s been interesting hearing him talk about the things that he’s going through and how he’s had to change his mindset and approach to swimming. And the way he sort of explained it was that with his running and his biking, he can push harder and go faster, which is pretty standard. And I hear that all the time. The difference with swimming is it’s so technique focused

that you’ve really gotta remove a lot of the tension that you’ve got because the body doesn’t move well when it’s tense. And so the dichotomy of it is often you have to sort of try less, you have to be more relaxed to go faster. And that can certainly be a different approach than what you may have taken in the past. And so what he’s really sort of dealing with and starting to realize is that the more he relaxes and he just sort of gets into this flow of his stroke, the faster he swims. And there was a, he did a 1,000 yard time trial that the first one he did, he felt like he went out too hard and he blew up and he was just sort of muscling his way through the first 800 yards of that time trial. And his time was like 11.57, I think it was. And then he was like, all right, I think I know what I did wrong. I’m going to go a little bit easier on the way out so I don’t blow up in the beginning and have to get rid of this lactic acid.

And he was aiming to just relax more. And he ended up going in 11.48, I think. So it was maybe nine seconds quicker. And it was really good to see that because it’s like, yes, that is exactly what you have to do. You have to almost not try less in a way and just relax in order to swim faster. And there’s a good sort of thing you can do in the pool that can just show you the difference here. So if you’re doing a set of like repeat hundreds or even 200s, let’s say you go 6,100s, do them all in the same pace with about 20 seconds rest and do one of them where you are, I want you to go them all at sort of race pace. Do one of them where you are feeling like you’re pulling hard and you’re tense and you’re gripping hard at the water and you’re really trying to muscle your way through it. Then on the other ones, on the even ones, do it where you are relaxed. Where you are, yeah, you’re still putting in the same amount of effort,

but you’re just kind of cruisey with it. Your hands, your forearms might feel a little bit sort of softer, a bit more relaxed there. And you’re just trying to just find this nice flow and this nice rhythm. See if there’s a difference in speed for you and see if there’s a difference in energy that you’ve got left after each hundred. So when we run clinics, we like to do these contrast drills where we do the wrong thing and then the right thing. And that builds up this awareness around what it should feel like when you’re doing it right. And hopefully, and you’ll see that difference in terms of your speed and you’ll notice it when you, in terms of how you feel. So by doing these wrong thing and right thing, experimenting that way can be a great way to sort of learn this stuff. And that’s what we’re seeing with Lionel Sanders. So I’m gonna do this YouTube video. If you’re not subscribed to our YouTube channel and you’re listening to this podcast on Spotify

or the Apple podcast app, wherever it might be, go and have a look at our YouTube channel and subscribe. I’ll be posting this video sometime in the next two weeks and sort of breaking it down. And next time you go to the pool, just see if you can see a difference there with when you try less. And sometimes I’ve had people come up to me about, you know, it’s called effortless swimming. Right now, like, you know, making a jacar swimming is not effortless. It’s like, well, yeah, it takes a lot of work to get to effortless. But when you’ve got good technique, you’ve got good timing, that’s how it feels. So I’ve had often my, like some of my best races have felt the easiest in a way because those races where I haven’t gone well, I’ve either tried too hard and my timing’s kind of been out a little bit and I’m just, you know, mustn’t have my way through it. But those races that have felt the best, it’s a really good feeling and it is somewhat effortless.

Now, yeah, you’ve obviously got to put in effort and work for it, but it feels so much more effortless. So hopefully you can get the nuance in what I’m trying to get across here. So that’s what we want to aim for. And it’s not going to happen every time. Look, there are swims, there’s training sessions where you’re like, this is just hard work and it’s frustrating. And sometimes you can go into this downward spiral and that’s what we’ve seen and he was able to sort of pick this up. That’s what you see with Lionel Sanders in some of these videos. So if you can just allow yourself to relax more, it helps. And some of the ways that I found good to be able to do that, if, like, if you know you’re not going to have a great session or if you’re fatigued or whatever it might be, do a slightly longer warmup and that can often just give you a bit more time to get into your groove. Do some warmup with fins on. So usually our standard sort of initial warmup

is 600 to 800 fins choice, sometimes with some drills in there. Then we’ll also do some stuff after that with some like kicks and drill, some skull and then a little bit of speed work at the end of the warmup just to get the blood pumping, but give yourself a long warmup and use fins in the beginning. And that can be a really good way just to have a better main set because if you jump in, you do 200 meters and then you start your main set and you’re going for it, you’re probably not warmed up enough and then you might just sort of feel that fatigue immediately through the lats and through the shoulders and you can tend to seize up a little bit. So a longer warmup can be a good way to do it. The other thing I like to do with training sets to sort of make things or to keep that effortless feeling as you get quicker is I really like sets that progressively get quicker. Now, on the last episode, we were talking about being a one speed swimmer

and how you can do some variable pace sets where you might do like 3, 100s where it’s easy, medium, fast. Now, what I’m talking about with these sets is I like sets that sort of, they crescendo. You start out fairly comfortable and they slowly get quicker and quicker and quicker. And the last part of the set is the one where you’re really going for it. So it might be like a 1500 meter or two kilometer main set that starts out pretty comfortable but finishes fast. It’s like the typical, the standard 10, 400 set that you might have heard a lot of swimmers and clubs doing. So it’s 10, 400s where you basically go like four at 70%,

three at 75%, you go two at 80% and then one at 85%. So it’s gradual build. And those kinds of sets that go that way can just allay to after one and a half, two k’s or even four k’s in that example, you can really feel good and feel effortless even when you’ve pushed yourself to the limit at the very end of it. So they can be good ways to do it. Now, that’s instead of going like really, really hard at the start of a set and then blowing up and just getting frustrated. So that’s what we want to sort of avoid. So there are a couple of different ways that you can get that effortless feeling in your stroke. Now, if you know or if there’s no such thing as effortless for you at the moment, get your technique looked at, whether that’s from me, whether that’s from another coach or whether you just get a friend of yours to film you with your phone at the pool and looking if you’ve seen our feedback Friday videos and those sorts of things.

You should have a pretty good idea of those things that you need to work on. So just get your technique sorted. Know what it is you need to work on, start improving that. And that’s when that effortless feeling can really come. And the other thing you sort of need to do there as well is make sure you’re in the pool regularly enough. If you’re training once a week, you’re probably not gonna be in there enough to keep or develop that feel for the water. So consistency is key. I like to try and do three sessions a week but if you can only do two, that’s fine. But three is a good number to try and hit each week if you’re not doing more than that. So a couple of ways for you to become more effortless in your stroke. So thanks for listening to this podcast. And if you are listening on the iTunes app, please give us a rating if you do enjoy it. It helps us be seen to more people. We’ll be back next week with another episode.

Next week’s episode is with a friend of mine, who has just recently swum the length of Lake Taupo in New Zealand, which is 40 kilometers. So we’re going to look at what he did to train for that swim, how he went mentally with it, and the preparation and what was involved. So looking forward to that episode next week and I’ll see you then.

The post How To Make Your Swimming Feel “Effortless” appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Do you only have one speed?
In this episode, we are talking about developing your gears as a swimmer. If you want to develop your ability and your skills as a swimmer or as a triathlete, then it is going to really pay off to be able to adjust the effort you put in and the speed that you get back as a result of it. We are also talking about the common mistakes that people make when they struggle to increase their speed.

01:15 Accordion Effect

02:23 Apply More Pressure and Power At The Front Of Your Stroke

03:31 Difference In Speed Is Minimal

07:25 Tighten Up The Kick

08:41 Tuning Into Your Breathing

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When you enter and you’re at full extension, be that accordion that’s at full length and then you can compress it or contract it back in. We want to have that kind of accordion effect with every stroke that we take. Otherwise, it’s these really sort of short and fast in and out movements, but that doesn’t make good music. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to episode number 169 of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. In this episode, we’re talking about developing your gears as a swimmer. When people come to clinics, one of the most common things that I hear when we do the filming section of it is, I’ve only got one speed. We want them to swim there at their main event race pace if they’re a competitive swimmer, and often they’ll say, well, I’ve only got one speed, so I’ll just swim at that speed.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you want to develop your ability and your skills as a swimmer or as a triathlete, then it’s going to really pay off to be able to adjust the effort that you put in and the speed that you get back as a result of it. So in this episode, we’re going to explore that and have a look at some of the common mistakes that people make when they really struggle to increase their speed when they put in more effort. Now, one of the very first things that I’ll see is that when people try to pick up the speed, they start to spin the wheels. And what we mean by that is when they enter the water and they go to start the catch, they’ll pull through straight away. They will forget to reach forwards, like they’re reaching forwards for the wall in front of them, and they’ll forget to reach forwards and rotate and stretch out from their hip to torso through their shoulder. They won’t have that in the stroke. They’ll miss that

reach portion of it. So they’re essentially just entering and pulling straight through. But it’s kind of like, I picture it, it’s like an accordion, that musical instrument that we stretch apart, you bring back together. When you enter and you’re at full extension, be that accordion that’s at full length, and then you can compress it or contract it back in. We want to have that kind of accordion effect with every stroke that we take. Otherwise, it’s these really sort of short and fast in and out movements, but that doesn’t make good music. So we need to be able to really lengthen out still, even when we go to to speed up. So that’s the first thing. Make sure that you’re still reaching and rotating with each stroke. Now, the second one is, when you do swim faster, you’re going to need to apply a little bit more pressure and power at the front of your stroke. So the catch is still certainly the setup phase of the stroke, but you’re going to be applying more power earlier on.

Now it doesn’t mean that when your hand’s out at full extension, and the palm is facing down, that we want to rip hard straight away then. No, we want to point the fingertips down, tip them down a little bit before you start putting power into it, but it’s not long after that that we want to start to apply the power. So you may have heard this on one of the YouTube videos that we did recently. If you’re not a subscriber on our YouTube channel or on our Instagram, go and check that out at Effortless Swimming. And one of the videos I talked about, Michael Sage, who’s an open water swim coach, someone asked him on a recent webinar, how do people increase their speed? What are some of the things that they do? And the first thing he said was, you’ll increase the pressure. You’ll increase the power at the front of the stroke. So you need to make sure that you do apply a bit more pressure through the catch phase of the stroke. So you just get into it that little bit earlier.

Now the next one is, it’s quite minimal, the increase in speed that you’ll get when you increase the effort. So again, on this webinar that he did, he was looking at the different, basically the different gears that his elite swimmers have got. And now I’m sort of looking at, I think they call it like A1, A2, A3, as like the different sort of zones that they need to swim in. And it was one or two seconds difference per 100. So with a lot of his elite guys, you know, if they’re doing a training set that will get them to swim in three different, at three different paces, for example, it might be three to, oh, sorry, it might be nine 200s, where you’re doing three at one speed, three at another speed. And then the last three at another speed, he’s getting them to go like one minute 13 per 100 for that set for the first three, then one minute 12, and then one minute 11. Like it is very minimal, the difference

in speed. And I think sometimes when I’ve spoken to people about this, they think that difference needs to be like two minutes, 150, 140, it shouldn’t be that much of a difference. Now, obviously,

it’s less of a, it’s the same percentage that we want to sort of change it by. So it may not be one second difference, but it might only be two seconds, maybe three seconds, if you’re around like a two minute swimmer. So it could be like a 206, 203, two minute pace. It’s going to be much less than what you may think. And that’s often one of the mistakes that I see people making is that the gears are really sort of tuned a long way apart, instead of having them quite finely tuned. And they know the exact effort that they need to put in for that slight change in speed. So the more you swim, the more you sort of tune into this. And the more that you watch your times that you’re doing throughout a set, whether that be on your, on your watch, your Garmin, your Apple Watch, or looking at the clock at the pool, the more you start to tune into what times you’re doing in training, then you’ll get, you’ll get really good at it. And I find that particularly helpful when

you’re racing. So in a race, you know, we’re not going to be swimming at the same speed the entire time. Usually we will need to pick it up a bit at the end. You might need to go out a little bit quicker depending on whether you’re looking to join a group or sit on feet, whatever it might be. But being very good at finally tuning into that is a really important skill if you are racing. Now, if you’re more swimming for fitness, it’s still a good skill to have. Because as I said, if you want to develop your, your skills and your ability and your experience in the water, then it’s going to pay off to be able to vary your pace. So if all of your training at the moment is at one speed, perhaps you start to introduce some variable pace sets, kind of like the one I mentioned, the nine 200s, but the simplest version of that could be something like three 100s, build one to three, meaning the first one’s easy, second one’s medium, third one is fast,

but you don’t need to have that 10 second drop every single time, make it two or three seconds difference for each hundred that you do. So if you were to say, do that three 100 set, you might take 20 seconds rest after each 100, get your times, whether you look at the clock, where you get them on your watch, and you can repeat that set over and over until you’re really tuned in well to being able to know what time you’re going to go for the effort that you’re putting in. That’s a really important skill as a swimmer. And you might have found this already if you’ve only been swimming for a year, as you’ve gone sort of later on into that year, 10th month, your 11th, your 12th, you’re probably starting to get a good sense of what your times will be when you do come in and touch the wall, and you can really continue to develop it. Now, another thing that that we often need to do is tighten up the kick. So when people are trying

to swim quicker, they’ll often increase the the amplitude of their kick as in like the size of it. We’ve got to keep the kick relatively narrow, not much bigger than your body line. So while we still often need to increase the the effort and the speed of the kick, we don’t want to increase the amplitude of it too much. So you need to keep the kick fairly narrow and fairly tight. So make sure that you’re not kicking really, really big. And the other thing that that I often see happening is people will try and have most of their propulsion come from their kick, but it’s really got to come from the catch and the pull and sinking that up well with your rotation and your kick as well. So if you find that you’re completely gassed after a fast 50 or a faster, faster 100 from over, overusing your legs, then maybe just back off the effort of the kick a little bit and let your upper body do a bit more of the work.

That can be a really good, really good approach. Now, when you get good at this stuff and when you’re doing some sets in training that might be quite challenging. The other thing that we that we want to tune into is our breathing. So for example, I was training at squad this morning. One of the sets that we were doing was a heart rate set. Now in this heart rate set, the main set was basically 100 at best average, which just means like 100 as fast as you can hold followed by 450 best average. So as fast as you can hold. And then we had 200 recovery. And we did that four times through. So it’s basically like 100 plus 450s of like close, not max effort, because you want to sustain the speed across that whole part of it. We don’t want to blow out at the second or third 50. So it’s about 300 meters of some real work and then some recovery. Now in that heart rate part of the set, the hard part, one of the things that you’ve really got to do to do that set well

is to keep your breathing relaxed. If you’re panicked, if you’re like really sort of trying to try and to increase your speed and you’re really sort of frantic about it, you’re not going to last for that 300 meters. You’re going to blow up very early on. So what I always try and do when I push off the wall, I’ll just try and sort of tune into my breathing, keep it as controlled as possible and as sort of rhythmic as possible as well. Because as soon as I start to go into like a panic style of breathing or a rush style of breathing, then I know that I’ve lost it and I’m going to start to gas out pretty quickly. So just tuning into how you’re controlling your breath is kind of one of the next

phases of it because as you get quicker, you’re obviously going to be needing a little bit more oxygen, a little bit more air. So your breathing is going to start to get a little bit heavier and a little bit more intense, but we don’t want to blow out to the point where it’s, you know, where we’re really skyrocketing with our heart rate. So they’re just a couple of things that you may find will help you when you go to change your gears in training. Now if you’re looking for workouts that you can use to increase your fitness, your endurance and your speed and improve those skills as a swimmer inside of our video membership. If you go to the effortlessswing.com website, inside of our membership there, we’ve got a hundred and we’ve basically got a 12 month training plan there. You can download and it’s got three workouts a week there that will take you through sprint sessions, threshold sessions, endurance sessions

and it will help you get really good at developing this sort of stuff. So that’s inside the workouts section of the Effortless Swing membership. So if you enjoyed this, enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to it, whichever platform you’re listening on and I’ll be back next week with another episode. And if you’d like to get in touch with me, go to our website on the contact form. You can send a message and that’s the best way to get in contact directly. And we’ve got clinics happening all around Australia. We’ve got them in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and soon Perth and Adelaide as well. So and we’ve got them in Cairns and Townsville too. So check the website for those dates. In terms of our camps, we’re going to start those back up next year in 2022. And if you are located overseas, if you’re not in Australia, we do online coaching as well where I can help you with your stroke. So you can see that on the website under the membership option. So thanks very much for listening. See you next

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

The post How To Avoid Being A “One Speed Swimmer” appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

I thought it might be useful through some of the things that I am tweaking, adjusting and changing with my own swimming that you may find useful in your own swimming.

00:36 Changing Habits and Having a Good Routine
02:55 Starting The Day The Right Way
05:50 Training Harder and Longer Sessions
06:17 Expanding Skillset and Boundaries
10:03 Listening to Fictional Audio Books
11:16 Loosening Up and Staying on Top Of My Mobility
12:58 Do Less

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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. This is episode number 168. And this episode is titled Seven Things That I’m Changing This Year in My Swimming. I thought it might be useful to do an episode where I go through some of the things that I’m tweaking and adjusting and changing with my own swimming that you may find useful in your own swimming. Now, the first thing in no particular order, the first thing is my habits. Now, I’m not a person to really have a schedule. I hate having things sort of locked in and having to be places at certain times. For me, it’s just something that I should generally try and avoid. But it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t do it. So what I’ve changed this year is I’m making sure that I stick to a weekly training schedule. Often, I would just go to the pool when I felt like it. I’ll try and go every day or every second day at least. But there was no particular structure because I was training on my own. And I

would just go and I could fit it in. But this year, I’m making a point of going Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings with a squad that that I can swim with now because I’ve moved locations, I’ve moved house in the last couple of weeks. So it makes it a little bit easier. But I’m making sure that I stick to that schedule at a minimum. And then any other training sessions that I want to do on top of that, I can do whenever I like. But at least having that set schedule has really freed up a lot of things. So the first thing it’s freed up is it allows me to just go there. I’ve got this routine in place. And I know that every Sunday night, Tuesday night, Thursday night, that I’ll pack my bag at night, I’ll put it by the door next to the keys, and be ready to go. And then I don’t need to think about or put much mental energy into thinking about when I’m going to try and squeeze these things in. So they get done. First

thing in the morning, which I like to do because I feel better about it. I feel better about the day I can sit still I can sit at a computer, I can sit in front of a camera. After I’ve trained, I find that my mind doesn’t race as much. But also, it’s just a lot less attention that I need to put into thinking about when I can fit things in. So changing my habits or changing like having a set routine has has made a big difference so far. And so that’s been really, really useful as as number one. I’ve also done that around sort of work as well. So my kids are typically in daycare three days a week. And my wife works those three days as well. So I’m trying to get most of my work done in those three days. And a similar thing is with the squad training was I just try and fit it in when I could. But having that little bit of structure to a week has has really made a difference mentally. So that’s number one, changing habits and having a good routine. The second

one is I’m starting my morning the same way every time. And there’s two things that I’m really that I’ve done differently. The first one is I’ll get my heart rate variability using an app called HRV for the number four training. You might have heard this on an episode we did with Sam Fenton. And we’ve done it with Craig Cooper as well. I think he mentioned this app. So heart rate variability is basically a good way to sort of track how your body is recovering and how it’s feeling. And it can almost, in a way, kind of predict if you’re going to get sick. So it can be more useful than looking at your heart rate of a morning, you look at your heart rate variability. So there’s an app that you can use which can track it. So most mornings, as long as I remember, I’ll use this app to record it. And then I can see how I’m tracking in terms of recovery, whether I’m starting to get sick and anything else along those lines. So I’ve

been doing that every morning. And the second thing is, there’s a product called Athletic Greens that a friend of mine gave me a packet of to try. And I’ve been having that every morning as well. It’s a mix of like five dozen different ingredients. And it’s just one scoop that you’re having like in a shake every morning. And I’ve been having that and I’ve found it really good. Now I’ve only done it for about a month so far, but I’ve reordered for another three months. And I haven’t been sick in that time while I’ve been training hard and not working heaps, but I’ve been pretty active. And I haven’t gotten sick because last year, one of the things that I really struggled with was I kept getting sick every one to two months. And some of that was the kids bringing home things from daycare. And that just tends to happen when you’ve got young kids. But I just got a lot sick more regularly than I normally would. And so I’ve been having

this Athletic Greens every morning, so far so good. Tastes nice and it’s got a lot of good stuff in it. I’ve had that along with five to 10 grams of glutamine, which is really good for your gut health. Another thing that can help will stop you from getting sick. So I’ve been combining those two and just having that every morning. So the combination of those two things I am hoping won’t allow or will stop me or prevent me from getting sick as often as I was last year. So we’ll see what happens there. But so far so good. I’m feeling great in training. I find that’s all I really need before going to the pool. So I won’t often eat before it. I’ll just have this Athletic Greens shake. So I found that really, really good. I’m not paid by them or anything like that. But I just thought I’d mention it because I found it a really good product. I have just joined as an affiliate for them. So if you do purchase anything through that link,

then I will get a small commission on it. But that’s yeah, that’s I was using this product before that. Now the third thing is I’ve been training harder than I have harder and longer sessions than I have the last couple of years. So the sessions that I’m doing usually a minimum of 4k or just under anywhere up to about 5k.

Sometimes going into slightly longer ones, but typically around about 4k. Normally my sessions I was doing two to three case when I was doing them by myself. And there’s nothing nothing wrong with that at all. I do a short warm up and then just get straight into the main set. But training with this squad we’re typically doing an hour 20 to an hour and a half. And having that is the minimum distance. So I’m setting these sessions. So I’m writing the training sessions for this squad. And I’m following them. But they’re usually quite challenging. And you know, it’s it’s I’ve noticed a difference in terms of you know, physically I’m definitely a lot more exhausted because they’re harder. But my overall fitness is much better. My weight is better. I think just because I’m training harder and training longer. And I’m feeling really good with it. And over the last like eight weeks really, I’ve been able to build up that fitness and get to a point where

I haven’t been in this fit for a very long time, which is great. So increasing the intensity and the effort of the training sessions with a bit more structure and purpose behind them. With the three sessions a week, how I’m how we’re doing them on the Monday, it’s a Threshold Threshold session. So it’s like trying to stick to threshold pace or sort of going above or below threshold pace. You might think of your threshold paces around about 1500 meter pace. So that’s Monday mornings, Wednesday’s more sprint. So 25s and 50s short, sharp efforts. And the Fridays is a heart rate set. So for example, this morning with the heart rate set, it was 100 max effort, then about 20 seconds rest, followed by 50 max effort. And then followed by five fifties with very short rest, about two or three seconds rest, and then some recovery. And we do that three times. So really just trying to get the heart rate up there. The lactic acid is very high,

very fatigued and just looking to keep the heart rate up for know, for these intervals or for these sets. So that’s how I’ve been structuring those those three sessions so far. And finding that really good just to mix it up that way. The fourth one is just trying to expand my skill set and what I’m comfortable doing in my boundary. So having moved down to the coast from from the country. One of the things that I love is just being around the water and being at the beach and at the sea. And so I’m trying to just expand the things that I’m doing there. So not just the open water swimming and not just surfing, but I’m looking to go out and do some foil surfing, do some body surfing, just get out in the water and expand my my skill set out there and the ability to sort of read waves and read the tides and the currents and all that sort of sort of stuff. I really like that. So just trying to expand what I’m comfortable doing and getting out into some

bigger waves and that sort of thing. And I think it translates across to swimming as well. So in some of these harder sets that we’ve been doing it’s you’ve really got to focus on your breathing, keeping your heart rate down and just slowing down your breathing. Once you come in after 100 max effort, you hit the wall, you might have 20 seconds to recover. And if you’re panicked and you’re rushed and you’re huffing and puffing, you’re not going to be able to get your heart rate down. So you’ve really got to just come back to your breathing, smooth it out, slow it down and control it. And the same thing goes when you’re out there in in bigger waves or when you’re doing something that you might not be very comfortable doing. So I find that stuff really translates over. And I know for some people that can be, you know, going on like group rides and stuff like that and or mountain biking or running trails and that sort of thing, just going to places

where you’re maybe a little uncomfortable and you’re pushed and expanding your yeah, expanding that sort of circle of what you’re comfortable doing. The fifth thing is somewhat something related. It’s starting to listen to

fictional audio books. So me, I love sort of self improvement, whether that be swimming, sports related, personal growth, whether it’s business sort of stuff. I really like that kind of stuff. And so sort of read books and listen to audio books that are related to that. And I find that I’m always switched on to trying to improve. And so what I started doing a couple months ago was listening to fictional audio books, things that can just really take your mind off, you know, off this stuff that we’re always thinking about day to day. And so I’ve just been doing that. And if I have got long trips in the car, whether I’m like driving to the pool in the city or whether I’m on a plane, listening to these audio books kind of just switches your mind off and you can your mind just sort of does it’s not thinking about the normal things. It’s just taken by the story. So I’ve really enjoyed listening to fictional audio books as a way to just kind of zen

out and relax. And I’m just going to continue to do that because it’s been really enjoyable and something different that I haven’t really done for for a long time. Number six is just in terms of mobility. So with all this training and swimming and surfing, all this sort of stuff, I’ve been getting very sore, particularly through like between the shoulder blades in the back and upper traps and everything like very, very sore. So a couple of things that I’ve enjoyed using. And I know I’ve mentioned them last year, but the therapy gun, like a massage gun, so good. It’s just, you know, they might cost 200 bucks, 300 bucks, but you can, you know, you can use them once a day for a couple minutes and really just loosen up a lot, particularly if you’re sore through your back and through your shoulders. And great to use on your legs as well if you are running. So I’ve been using that. The so right is really good. So your so as which is kind of hard to

just look it up on Google your size is sort of these muscles, almost like the front of your hips and attaches sort of round to your lower back, you use that a lot when you’re swimming. So I’ve been using a piece of equipment called the so right PSO dash ITE. So right’s been really good. So I just line that at night sometimes. And then they’ve got this, I don’t know what it’s called, it’s like a so back or something. You basically line it on your back. It’s got about nine or 10 little ridges and kind of goes along the side of your spine. And you’ll you’ll line that. And that is so good for loosening up your back, which will get tired if you are swimming a lot. So that’s been very good as well. So I’m just trying to keep on top of that stuff because for me, if I’m sitting down a lot, if I’m training a lot, then I feel like I’m 80 years of age, you know, a few days into the week. So that’s been good for loosening up. And the last, the last thing is

just trying to do less, trying to simplify. Not only with the swimming, so I’ve kind of simplified what I’m doing in terms of the train. It’s like, all right, this is what I’m doing. I can stick to that. Then I don’t need to think about things, but also just work, you know, what I what I’m sort of saying yes to. So I’ve had a lot of opportunities come up in the last couple of months since we moved. And I’ve just said no to them because if I say yes and commit to too much, then I find that I don’t have the energy to do the things that I really want to and the things that I really enjoy. And so I’d get frustrated with that. So just saying no to no is the first response. And then you might come back and say yes to things later, but trying to do a whole lot less and just the things that I really enjoy. And then I find I’ve got much more energy and creativity to put into the things that I want to be doing and generally just a happier person.

And that has been helping a lot with training, and just sort of general day to day life stuff. So there are seven things. So having a routine, having habits. Number two is starting the day the right way. Number three is training harder. Number four is expanding my boundaries. Number five is fictional audio books. And number six was making sure that I stay on top of my mobility. And then the last one is just doing less. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of the podcast. The reason I do this podcast is because I want to sort of give you everything that I that I know and that we cover in clinics and that kind of thing. And the time that you’re ready to either join a clinic if you’re here in Australia or get some coaching online or join our membership and access all of our online technique videos, then that’s when you’re ready to do that. Then that’s what I’d love you to do. So if if any of those do apply to if you are here in Australia and you haven’t

been to a clinic, then come along. I’ve got no doubt that we can improve your stroke. We can make you love swing a whole lot more once you know what it is you want to focus on. And if you’re not in Australia, then we then I do this online technique coaching. We can send videos of your swimming and some of the results that we’re getting there and at the clinics. I’m just blown away by. So if you are at that point whenever you are ready, then I’d love to work with you. So I’ll put some links in the show notes on effortless swimming dot com and we’ll see you next episode. And don’t forget to leave a review if you’re listening on the iTunes store. I’d love to if you could leave an honest review there because that helps us come up the rankings and get exposed to more people. So thanks again for listening and I’ll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster,

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

The post 7 Things I’ve Changed With My Swimming In 2021 appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

In this episode, Chuck, who joined the Effortless Swimming Membership a couple of years ago, shares about his swimming experience, his hesitation in joining the membership, and how he has significantly improved over the years.

01:06 Joining Effortless Swimming Membership

04:23 Putting Attention To More Important Things

08:52 It’s all about “Reduce Drag, Increase Propulsion”

13:49 What You Think You’re Doing And What You Are Actually Doing Often Times Are Different Things

16:24 You Can’t Change Your Stroke Overnight

16:53 “I Didn’t Know Where My Lats Were”

The day that I did the 131, I could feel my lats the next day. And I remember you saying, two years ago, that your power in your stroke comes from your lats. I thought it came from your biceps, or I mean, I didn’t know. And then I thought, I remember writing back to you. I said, what are your lats? Where are they? 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 Chuck Ryan. And over the last few episodes, and for the next few episodes, I want to feature people who have been members for a number of months or a number of years. Because I want to show you that to improve your swimming, it’s a learned process. Everyone can improve their swimming. And a lot of it comes down to technique. And Chuck, you are someone who has made a huge change

to their swimming in the last two and a half years of being a stroke analysis member and with us working together. And we were talking about it earlier that we just looked back at your very first video from July, I think June, July in 2018. 2018, 2018, I think, actually. It was 2018, yeah. Yeah, it was a little early. But it has been such a huge difference. And you sent me a post the other week saying that you got down to 130 or 131 for 100 yard swim, where you were no way near that when you first started. Where were you at when you first joined the membership? And why did you decide to join? Well, I took up swimming probably 10 years ago, just for general fitness, with no real plan. Just join a pool, go to the pool, midday at work, kind of a way to relax at work, reach three or four times a week, and just swim. I mean, whatever you could do. It was usually backstroke and a really lousy breaststroke. Not much freestyle because it was exhausting.

I could probably do 100 yards and 215 or 220 and be absolutely just beat by the end of that. So I generally avoided doing the freestyle. I would even do side stroke or elementary backstroke. But it just got to the point where you see these videos of people who start out not being able to swim and then suddenly they can do these things freestyle and they get their times down and they’re doing Ironman. They’re doing Half Ironman. It’s why can’t I do that? I have the motivation. I don’t know that I have the motivation to do Ironman, maybe one of these days. But you just decide, well, I’m kind of wasting my time here and I’m not having that much fun. I really want to understand how you move through the water efficiently. And in the case of the name of your program effortlessly, I wouldn’t say it’s effortless, but it certainly has becoming with less effort. So you figure out, you’ll watch a couple of your publicly available videos

and then you think, well, I would really like to get into this more. And I remember being really scared to quote unquote apply because what am I going to say? I mean, I’m an idiot with regard to swimming. And I didn’t know what kind of people you’re taking. I mean, I see you’re taking triathletes and it’s very intimidating to a lot of people to think that they’re working with someone who works with people like that or works with really high level or even has worked with Olympic swimmers. So I quite timidly wrote, I don’t even remember what I wrote. I kind of remember what I wrote. And you said, hey, you look seem like the kind of person that we’d like to have or that would get something out of this program. And I thought, well, I hope so. I’m really not sure what I’m getting into. And well, here we are. So what used to take 220, now I can do in 131, 130. I can do it consistently. I’m trying to do a 400 yards and try

to get it down to seven minutes, seven and a half minutes with less effort. I’m sure I can do that in the next couple of months. So like I said, that’s where I’m coming from here. Yeah. And I can totally see the maybe intimidation about joining a program like this and not knowing it from the inside but looking from the outside, thinking that maybe you’re not good enough at the time to apply. And is this actually going to help me? Because I mean, especially if you don’t necessarily come from a swimming background, if you’re really struggling with maybe making 100 or 400 meters with your freestyle, it’s like, wow, I feel like a real beginner. And it’s a sport that can sort of take someone with a lot of confidence, but if they get in the water and they can’t swim, it’s like you feel like you’re starting from scratch and it feels like a very daunting thing to learn. So I’m glad that you did apply and we started working together.

And some of the things that we saw in that initial video were looking a long way forward. Legs were dropping a lot. And as a result, really hard to get the arms out and so on. And one of the first things we worked on was balance and just minimizing drag. And you said at the start of this call before we were talking that you don’t know how the improvement in body position came along, but it just started to improve. Can you remember some of the things that you first started working on or putting your attention to in the first sort of three to six months? Well, I can tell you things I started to put less attention to because they realized they weren’t only that important and I thought they were. One of those is the kick. I think I watched a podcast that you’d done with. I think his name was Carsten the other day it was on. And he mentioned the kick and that he thought that that was so important and that that’s where all your propulsion comes from.

And once I realized that that’s completely wrong, at least for someone at my level to just not focus on that at all or not really focused on it much, do a forebeat kick I think is what I usually do. Once I dispensed with that whole notion and started to focus on upper body, that’s when some things really started to click. And then the second thing I ignored was I was just obsessed with bilateral breathing.

Good swimmers must breathe on both sides. It has to be symmetrical. It has to look just a certain way. And I realized after watching some Olympic swimmers they don’t do that.

That’s not really necessary. It’s probably a good skill to have perhaps in open water where you’re dealing with a wind from one side or the other. But I dispensed with that whole notion about bilateral breathing and just stuck to the side that works best for me. And then the legs started to just come up after about a year of working with you. And I think I remember being very excited when I could do 145 for 100 yards with 95% effort

but I was doing it. And so that was exciting. I remember that happening. But really since that time and then with the couple of months of shutdown that we had from COVID kind of felt a little like I’m just treading water but it pleased with the very slow progress.

So the whole issue with older folks

I think is muscle memory and getting your body to do something repeatedly and naturally. And the freestyle high elbow catch stroke is a very unnatural thing to do with your body. At least it seems that way to me. It seems very awkward until you’ve done it thousands of times and then it becomes less awkward. And maybe if you learned it as a kid like I’m sure you did, it doesn’t seem awkward at all. But it seems very awkward and somewhat difficult for someone in their 50s even with good mobility. But it just eventually just comes about. And you mentioned in your post the other week that it started to like something just clicked and then like you were tracking your times you’re using the form goggles to track your times and just all of a sudden you did this 130, 100 and it just all sort of came together. What was that? Do you know what were you thinking about at the time or what was it that sort of changed for you

in that session? Well, I just listened to a podcast in my ride to the pool, a 15 minute ride. I listened to the first half of your podcast where you were discussing the core, the body’s core and how do you develop that? I forget the name of the guy you were speaking with but it was very, it got me really focused. And I think I just carried that focus into the pool that afternoon. It was a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. So it wasn’t a work day. And I just remember feeling very long and tight in the water. And when I saw my split time on the goggles I got this adrenaline rush and I just started to go nuts.

Maybe a little bit, maybe thrashing a little bit because it got sloppy towards the end. But then the next session that I went, I did it again and then I did some drills. I did it again. I did it four times that session. I had times all less than 136. And that has never happened.

I didn’t feel exhausted. I know I was in a heart zone that was not the max.

I could probably push myself more but I just remember being so excited about that that I thought maybe the goggles weren’t working correctly. And so I took a video recording of it where you can clearly see. I could clearly see myself leave the, in the beginning four times up and back or two times up and back. And then with a lousy touch turn they were almost knocked over the camera. So I think I’ve lost two or three seconds but when you look at that video, it’s a 131 or a 130. And that confirmed that the advertising that these form goggles guys do is it, they really do record accurately your time in motion and your stop time. So once I confirmed to myself that this wasn’t a fluke and then I could consistently do it, it’s very rewarding and I think I used the word thrilling because it is. It’s not really a fast time at all but for me coming from where I was, it’s stunning and it’s all about reduced drag, increased propulsion.

And it’s, I think at one point a year ago you told me to separate my fingers a little more. You saw I was cupping my hands and I thought, well, cupping your hands that must be how you get the most water. And then I, after you said, don’t do that, let them relax a little bit, actually thought about the fluid dynamics of it and the effectiveness of really creating a larger surface to push the water past you. And it makes sense that you don’t want to cup your hands but I never really thought about it. And so that’s just another one of the little things that comes up where you say, you always focus on just one or two things rather than trying to get a whole magnitude of, you need to fix this, you need to fix that. You just have these little takeaways, go do this and come back in a couple of weeks with another video.

Or in my case, I probably, for every video I send you, there’s probably one that doesn’t make the cut because I look at it and I say,

I’m not sending this to him because it’s terrible. It doesn’t show any improvement or I wasn’t concentrating. And so I have quite a collection of failed clips

from the pool. And even then, sometimes it’s hard to get a video at the pool because you want to be courteous to the other people who are there, I tend to wait till there’s hardly anybody in the pool and then ask their permission if it turns out they’re going to look, perhaps be in the background of my camera shot. But I’ve never had an issue with that. So I don’t know what more I can say, it’s just, it’s really amazing.

I guess the other takeaway that I get, and you’ve said it many times, I see you say it to everybody, what you think you are doing and what you are actually doing, oftentimes are very different things and it’s difficult to see that unless you record yourself

and then work to correct it by exaggerating the movement or feeling like you’re overcorrecting that absolutely is a truism. I mean, that’s, I can’t tell you many times where I know I’m doing this, but you look at the video and it doesn’t lie. You’re not, I’m not doing it. My arms are not straight. My pull is not coming back closer to my body.

It’s out. It’s not the YMCA drill. So it’s just, it’s really a way of learning to swim

that would have been impossible 15 years ago without GoPros or waterproof iPhones or whatever it is people are using and then the ability to transmit that to someone on the other side of the world

who can look at it and having seen thousands of these really get to the core of the problem and work slowly to fix it and it really does work. It’s really amazing that it works at all.

So it’s, and I think that’s a really, something that I’ve noticed with the swimmers who make progress like yourself. It’s often the ones that are willing to stick to it long-term and stick to it long enough where they’re willing to fail in a way where it’s like you try and make the changes, you see it on the video and go, okay, that wasn’t it. And then you go back and try again and then you maybe exaggerate those points a little bit more and then you get those happening in the stroke and then we look at the next thing and then look at what to work on. And sometimes some of the old bad habits creep in and that’s normal. You’re not going to just change things permanently forever. Things will creep back in, but with a timeframe of two and a half years some people might look at that and go, that’s a long time. They might think that’s a short time, but to have stuck with it for that long, I’m not surprised with the attention

that you’ve put on your technique and the consistency that you’ve had with your training. I’m not surprised that you’re at where you are now. And as you mentioned in one of the posts, you said, I’m just an amateur swimmer. I’m nothing special with my swimming and it just goes to show that with the right approach and the right mindset I think going in that if you’re willing to stick with it long enough and to be willing to record yourself regularly enough and get that feedback, it is absolutely possible to become a better swimmer. So first of all, congratulations on the massive change and what are your goals now that you’ve come this far? What is it that sort of excites you now about your swimming? Well, I think to keep, try to get my time down a little bit more within reason. I mean, I think I could get my time down into the low 120s, maybe even 120. I know I can do that pace in a 50 yards. I just kind of run out of gas.

I mean, it’s a matter of maybe a little bit of age and a little bit of fitness. I mean, like I said, I think I’m reasonably fit but I’m not crazy about it. I don’t take supplements. I don’t work out every day. I try to let muscle recovery occur. I think it’s important. I don’t wanna strain myself and I typically never have, although I think the day that I did the 131, I could feel my lats the next day. And I remember you saying two years ago, that your power in your stroke comes from your lats. Not, I thought it came from your biceps or, I mean, I didn’t know. And then I thought, I remember writing back to you, I said, what are your lats? Where are they? I mean, I actually look it up on Wikipedia because I’m that lacking in knowledge of muscles. I mean, I can tell you all about physics, chemistry, geography and astronomy and paleontology but I didn’t know where my lats were. I mean, it’s pretty weird but I think I must be using them

because they feel different. They occasionally feel tight and I guess that’s a good thing. I mean, you develop your muscles by more or less tearing them slowly over time. And maybe that’s what’s happening. I’m not gonna obsess over it but that might be one thing that’s changing is I’m using my lats and I’m not just using my arms. It’s a really common response that I get from people when they change their stroke in the right way and sometimes that’s over the course of months or sometimes if we’re running clinics we’ll get people to make some changes there at the clinic in person. And before they, sometimes I’d feel it through the front of their shoulder or up through here and it’s more an uncomfortable sort of feeling but if they sometimes change their posture and they go to this tall and proud posture as opposed to being rounded, if they change where they’re going where their arm is or hand is through their catch and pull

it just puts their arm in a different position to allow them to use their lats and through their back and shoulders more. And that is when you can have much more power for the same or even less effort. And it’s a good indicator that you’re doing the right thing. So it’s really good to see how much you’ve learned

in the last two and a half years because like if I was going to geology for example saying I’d have no idea where to start and I guess it’s the same thing for you going into swimming. So all these little changes like having your fingers a little bit further apart looking in the right position not putting as much attention on the kick. It’s, it might sound simple now but for someone with next to no knowledge come into it it’s that stuff can make a huge difference as I think we’ve seen. So yeah, congratulations and thanks for sharing your journey in the last two and a half years on the podcast. I’m sure that a lot of people will find there’s something to take away from that. So thank you for that and all the best for the next, well next six to 12 months and 120 is certainly with insight now that you’re down to 131 and yeah, I think that’s a good target and be, might have to get you back on when we get down to 120 and see what’s changing there.

We’ll see how soon that happens. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, Chuck. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster and more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post Case Study: A 50 Second Improvement Per 100 Yards with Chuck Rine appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Karsten Weber is one of our members in our Effortless Swimming Membership program. His experience in swimming mostly involved breaststroke and diving and never did freestyle swimming. Join us as he talks about his journey from barely making 25 meters to swimming at 1:47/ 100m.

00:58 Swimming Background
01:53 Joining Ironman After A Heart Attack
04:57 “Never Did Any Freestyle”
11:05 Comparing Strokes From A Month Ago
12:04 Finding The Right Balance With Your Stroke (Sweet Spot)
14:12 Not Power But Technique
14:30 “You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know”
16:05 Breaking It Down (Focus On One Thing At A Time)

It felt like a plateau there until I started getting some of that feedback from the effortless swimming and then really getting the right body precision. 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 Carsten Weber. And Carsten and I started working together in the last one to two months. And the reason I wanted to get you on, Carsten, is because you’ve had a pretty significant improvement in your swimming in the last two months. So I want to talk about that and then also sort of what got you into swimming because you weren’t, I think it was a few months ago that you said you could only do 25 metres in about a minute. And it’s improved pretty significantly since then. So I think it’s good to share what you’ve done because I know a lot of other people

are probably in the same boat. So first of all, welcome. And what’s your sort of background into getting into swimming? Sure. So I’ve always enjoyed swimming in terms of, I did a lot of diving when I was a teenager. I grew up in Denmark and I’ll live here in Austin, Texas. But back in Denmark, I was always breaststroke and it was diving. So I never did any freestyle. And then for the last 10 years or so, I did very little swimming at all. But now I’m signed up for an Ironman in September of this year. And that includes swimming. So I’ve been out there, started swimming back in September and September of this year is when the Ironman is, so that has been great. In terms of what got me into the Ironman, that’s an interesting story where on Father’s Day of 2019, I was down at the coast here in Texas and trying to learn to kite surf and was out there a couple of hours. And then when I came in, I just started feeling really crappy.

It’s like a lot of pressure on my chest. I was wondering if I pulled a muscle or if I had somehow swallowed some seawater or something. And it turned out it was a heart attack. I never in a billion years would have guessed that it was a heart attack. My wife came back to the beach, she’d been out for lunch, she’d just got back and put the kite down. I sat down. I told her I just don’t feel right. And it got worse and worse minute by minute. And she’s like, I’m taking her to the ER and I’m like, okay. And we’re driving from the beach. She said she’s just seen one of those little emergency rooms, a little local one. So she’s driving from the beach, she’s trying to make a decision. Should she go to the big heart hospital that’s about half an hour away or should she go to this little local dock in a box that’s two minutes away? And I’m glad she made the decision to go to the dock in the box or I wouldn’t be here

today. I mean, it was by the time I got to the ER, I could just, I mean, or the little emergency room, I could just barely crawl in there. And there was a nurse there that immediately recognized that it was a heart attack and just started the treatment. And a couple of hours later, I was transferred to the big heart hospital and I got a stent put in earlier that same year. I’ve done two ultramarathons, so I’ve done a lot of running. I was in great shape. And the surgeon there said, if I hadn’t done all that running, if I weren’t in that kind of a shape, I just wouldn’t have made it the kind of heart attack I had was in the widowmaker. And there’s a 2% survival rate for what I have. So I’m lucky to be alive and did six months of recovery, full recovery. And my cardiologist said, no restriction on exercise. In fact, the more the better. And I’m thinking, the more the better. Okay, let’s go for an Ironman. What could be better than that?

So that’s the motivation. That’s why I’m here. And that’s why, you know, wanna prolong my life. Wanna have more years with my family. So that’s where that’s what started this. And so then you decide to enter an Ironman. And what was your swimming background before this? Because had you had any experience swimming at school or anything like that? Mainly just diving and just but not a whole lot of swimming and back in Denmark. It was all breaststroke. I mean, that was so popular. So that was what I stuck with. And I basically never did any freestyle. So back here in September of last year, when I started training for the Ironman, that was really the first time in decades that I did freestyle. And I remember when I joined Epilept Swimming, you asked me what do you want to focus on. And I said, well, since I haven’t really done it in forever, I want to focus on not getting any bad habits. I mean, I’m starting to scratch.

It literally did take me a minute to get from one end of the pool to the other, 25 meters. And I was so winded when I got to the other side. I was kicking with my feet like crazy thinking that’s where all the propulsion comes from. I’ve since learned that is not the case. And but that’s really how it started out. And and I really liked the idea of being able to do the video recording and going in on a very detailed level and and adjusting things that really appealed to me. And what did you think when you when you first got in and started swimming, where you struggled to make 25 meters? Was it like, oh, boy, like of what have I got ahead of me? Or was it something where you thought, OK, this is this is just a starting point and I know I can get better? I was so comfortable with breaststroke that I thought about I’m just going to do the Ironman with breaststroke instead of freestyle. And then I started looking at the times and it’s like, no, I got to learn.

I got along this freestyle and.

And then, yeah, just very I’m an engineer by background, but just taking a very engineering approach. And I remember getting the snorkel on there. So I didn’t have to turn my head got the pool boys. I didn’t have to worry about the the sagging legs, which were really bad instead of being horizontal. I think I was more like 30 degrees or something when I was going through the water. But really to where just try and focus on one thing at a time, break it down that way. And. Yeah, I mean, I remember when it first started out, it was. I was, I think, 26 strokes or so to get from one end of the pool to the other.

I just counted the total strokes instead of doing the distance per stroke. And it was about something like 26. And I could get that down to 22 strokes to get from one side to the other pretty quickly. And then it just it felt like a plateaued there until I started getting some of that feedback from. From the effortless swimming and then really getting the right body position. And and that’s a more of the technique. And now last week, I just counted it and it’s it’s somewhere around 14 to 15 strokes per per lane. So it’s come from 26 to 15. And I remember one of the things I suggested was to do a some sort of time trial, so I said, all right, 400 time trial just to give you a bit of a benchmark of where you’re at. So we know if you’re improving or not. And I think you did a 750, I think it was seven minutes, 50. That sounds about right. Yeah, 400. And then. Yeah, that was again, I mean, that that was what, two, two months after starting swimming.

So that has improved quite a bit there. And and but it was still, I mean, in hindsight, even that was still, you know, with sinking legs. And then something happened to where I just always assumed that the sinking legs would only go away if you sort of made up for it with the arms and you were swimming so fast that they just naturally stopped the leg stops to rise. I don’t know that was my thinking or it was when I was kicking with the arms and you were swimming so fast that they just naturally stopped the leg stops to rise. Or it was when I was kicking with the legs, the legs were just not very effective. I was kicking a lot, but it was only giving propulsion like backwards if there’s no upwards lift. So changing it to where the kick help lift the legs and and also just move, move the hip enough to really sort of lift up the butt. I mean, that made a huge difference. And I think the last one was was just over for the seven minutes for for the last time trial.

Yeah, I think you said it was 707. And we after that 750, you said, all right, next guy might be set under 745. And then you jumped under that pretty quickly, which is which is awesome. And one of the things you mentioned about that you changed about your kick was you you made it feel like you were flicking a piece of dirt off your shoe as the downward kick, which I think is a really good analogy for for kicking because we want this downwards whipping motion. And that downwards whipping motion can help bring the hips and the legs up. So it’s a good way to to think about it. And I was looking back at your original videos as well. And one of the things that we looked at with it was it was somewhat short out the front. So there wasn’t much length and extension. And the stroke now where you’re reaching for the wall, so to speak, it’s so much longer and you get much better connection through the whole body with it.

And that as well can help bring the the legs up to. And and that’s what we’re seeing now, I think. So how does it feel your stroke and when you swing? How does it feel now compared to about a month ago or maybe just before you started with this? It I mean, if it feels a lot better, I still feel like I was for a long time, I was very much focusing on this distance per stroke where like gliding and doing effectively doing very slow strokes. And that results in just always being out of breath because it takes a while for, you know, I’m trying to breathe on both sides for symmetry. And if you just go too slow, I mean, that’s a long time between breathing. And so now I’m trying to really just speed it up a little bit and do the the cadence a little higher. And that has actually helped tremendously in terms of not running out of breath. So swimming faster made it easier in that sense. Yeah, and that’s that’s an interesting one, too, because I think like stroke counts

a good measure sometimes of your of your technique. If you just mean like a very easy 50 or a very easy hundred, you can get your stroke count and it’s an indication as to how efficient you can be in the swim. But it doesn’t mean that we always just want to sit at the lowest possible stroke count. Because as you said, sometimes it’s a long time in between breaths. And the other factor in your speed is your cadence as well. And we actually find that like for me, for example, if I try and hold my minimum stroke count, my effort on my heart rates up quite high sometimes because there’s quite a bit of power going into the stroke. I’m not getting as much breath and I can actually swim at say, let’s say instead of 26 strokes, if I swim at 32 strokes for a 50 and I hold a stroke rate that’s probably 10 to 20 percent quicker, I’m a lot faster and the effort’s a lot less because it’s like that sweet spot. It’s like gears on a bike.

You don’t want to be sitting in that big, big gear the whole time. You want to go maybe one by week and just keep it ticking over all day, especially if you’re doing an iron man. So it’s about finding that balance. And it sounds like you’re starting to to find that balance with your stroke. Right. And it was it was surprising that going a little bit faster just made it so much easier in terms of the breathing and the pattern. Just at the sweet spot. Yeah, I’ve done some

outdoor swimming, it’s winter time here, so it’s with a wetsuit that helps tremendously in just terms of my sinking legs. And so I have done some iron man distance swimming the last one was in about an hour and 18 minutes, which is respectable. So it’s it’s not like I’m not in it to try and set any age group record. I mean, I’m just in it to try and finish it and and have fun with it. But that is a pretty decent time, I feel. And I I still think there’s a lot of room for improvement. Suddenly, we looked at something where the arms are not bent enough. Still, there’s still a lot of areas.

The big surprise to me is just how much of this is technique and not not raw power like if you’re running or biking, you can always power a little more here. There’s so much technique. Yeah, that’s yeah, that’s it. And it’s and sometimes if you’re brand new to a sport and need to anything like you just you don’t know what you don’t know. So and it’s really common with the kick. You know, you said at the start, you’re just kicking so hard because you felt like that’s where the propulsion should come from. And that’s what I think a lot of people they have they have the thought of when they first get started. But as you start to sort of work these things out and put them all together, swimming can be really enjoyable. It can be a lot of fun. And it can be, in a way, somewhat effortless. And when you get into that rhythm and that zone, it’s it’s just it’s really enjoyable. And that’s often where you improve a lot more because you’re having fun

fun with it, as you said. And I think that that approach where you’re not overly stressed about the times that you’re doing, you’re just there for the process and just seeing what you can what you can get down to. I think it’s a really good mindset for it as well. And to have that one 18 is again just another benchmark. Is yeah, is a great way to to then all right. We’ll see what we can get down to come September, because it’s nine months is a lot of time to bring that down. And if you were to get under under one 10, that would be really impressive.

Right now, that would that would certainly exceed my expectation. So that would be a great goal. Yeah. And I think that’s certainly possible. Just looking at looking at your videos every couple of weeks. It’s that’s the way I think it’s it’s heading.

And now that that would be great. So suddenly looking forward to that, I will say one thing that really helped me was what I talked about earlier, was really breaking it down and just try and get, you know, use the snorkel and and use the pull buoy. I mean, just do all these things in order to focus on one thing at a time. And I remember I was so proud when I when I did that first, you know, 100 meters swim in two minutes with my snorkel. And I send that in as my first video. And you’re like, that looks good. Now try it without the snorkel with the first feedback. But it’s still, I mean, that that helped me a lot. You know, break it down, focus on one thing at a time. It’s hard to change everything at once. Yeah, absolutely. And I think at the start, I might have said, like, we’ll keep it. The stuff that we focus on at the start might seem really simple. And so and often we don’t work on the catch at the very start.

And sometimes that’s kind of the sexy thing to work on, you know, is the catch and the pull, because that’s where a lot of the propulsion comes from. But if we don’t have these other things in place, like alignment and reach and rotation, then it’s very hard to to work on that. So I think it probably helps that you have this engineering approach to it.

By step, you know, just OK, I might be talking your language, which is which is helpful. Oh, yeah. No, definitely. And just break it down, count the number of strokes. It’s I mean, if you suddenly are spending one or two strokes less to get from one side and the other, you’re probably doing something right.

Yeah, well, thanks so much for for sharing the last couple of months on the on the podcast. Is there anything else that that you think would be helpful for someone listening or or something that you’ve maybe found in the last two months that that we haven’t talked about yet?

I know I would just say I like the videos. I particularly like the feedback Friday. It’s great to see somebody who is not an expert. And after a while, you can really you can start to pick up and say, oh, you know, I see another problem as well. So I think that those are very useful. Instead of only seeing the the elite swimmers. And other than that, you know, keep up the good work. And I look forward to the Ironman and hopefully reporting back a good time. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it as well. So yeah, thanks again, Carson. I appreciate it. Thank you. Have a good one. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

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