Effortless Swimming

Carl joins us again on the podcast. His background is in Functional Movement and in this episode, he shares some interesting aspects of the Serape Effect.

01:34 Carl’s experience with Serape Effect
03:13 Brenton’s Interpretation of Serape Effect
04:24 Carl’s Take on Serape Effect
06:04 Exercises
08:58 Understanding and Starting Serape
10:29 Building the Coordination
11:24 Serape Effect on Freestyle
13:50 Going for the Feel
15:12 Handbrakes to Serape Effect
19:50 Helping People Through Functional Movement
26:20 Core Principles
28:10 Body Awareness
29:29 Tuning into the Feeling Side

More About Carl Reader:
website: https://carlreadercoaching.com/
email: [email protected]

Have Carl analyze your exercise and movement routine to increase strength and avoid injury: https://carlreadercoaching.com/product/online-functional-movement-strength-training-for-triathletes/

Transcription:

Brenton: Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. This is episode number 134. I’ve got a guest from a previous episode, episode number 123, Carl Reader from South Africa. Carl, welcome to the podcast.

Carl Reader: Thanks, Brenton. Thanks for having me back again.

Brenton: It’s my pleasure.

Brenton: I did a video recently on the serape effect, which is a way to increase the power through part of your stroke using some primary muscles through the trunk. I sent an email out about it. You replied about some exercises and ways that you’ve used to develop the ability to use that serape effect with clients. That’s primarily what I want to talk about today.

Brenton: Your background’s obviously in functional movement and exercises physiology. You’re the main man when it comes to this kind of stuff. I’d love to get your take and your experience on developing this serape effect in swimmers and how people can use some dry land exercises to do it.

Brenton: We might start off with what’s your experience with this kind of movement in athletes, whether it be swimming or other sports?

Carl Reader: Well you know, as you said, it’s actually a highly functional movement. What we’ve found in the past, and just through the training, and the whole philosophy is was you’re generating power from one part of the body. Like if you were doing arm wrestling you would just use your arm. If you’re going to do golf you just swing the arm as hard as you can. Where now we’re getting to that position where we’re realizing that it’s so connected, it’s a kinetic chain. We’ve really been on this thing of when you use the whole body.

Carl Reader: If you can imagine like … I hate to bring this always to the forefront but if you watch often men punch, you’ll see that they wind up their whole body. If you watch a women often punch, you’ll see … Obviously, they’ve been trained to punch but it’s a natural thing, they just use their arm, they don’t generate that power unless they’ve been taught to do that. I don’t know why that is but it’s not discrimination but you’ll see that difference very clearly. I’ve got a five-year-old boy and you say, “Throw the ball.” He winds up the whole body where the little girls throw it along just using their arm.

Carl Reader: That’s where we’re moving towards is getting that whole body to twist and generate power as opposed to just getting a single joint to generate power.

Brenton: I guess we should probably talk a little bit more about what the serape effect is before we go into it in too much detail but I might give my take first in swimming. Then maybe your take overall, from all the different sports that you do.

Brenton: Basically one of the ways that you can generate more power through the stroke is when you’re … Basically in freestyle you’re reaching forward and extending with one arm out in front. You want your opposite hip to be lifted up. You’re basically lengthening the muscles through your hips, through your midsection, through your core, all the way up to the ribs. As they’re lengthening you’ll start the catch, and the kick, and you’ll start to rotate to the other side. It’s this contraction and shortening of the muscles that give this snapback effect to get this drive forwards to the other side.

Brenton: It’s really that flow and that nice rhythm that you see really good swimmers have. It’s how you can basically just take a lot of the effort out of trying to muscle your way through the stroke with your arms. You can really use your trunk and your whole body to generate speed and propulsion.

Brenton: That’s my take on it from a freestyle or a swimming perspective. What about you? How was my interpretation of it?

Carl Reader: No, that’s a good interpretation. I think you … With the turning of the hips you bring in … You start the flow of movement. You start it. You get that … Your power up. You almost prime the core system. It’s important for the distance. Understand you’ve got different systems in the body. That system as your doing … As you start to turn that hip and drop it down the other side, like you mentioned, it just primes all the lats, and the serratus, interior, and all the muscles that you use to actually do that catch and pull. It just makes it much more effective and powerful, as opposed to just keeping that still and then just pulling the arm down, which is only the end of the chain of the movement. You having to really generate as much power as you can through your shoulders, as opposed to all the power you’ve lost by priming that system.

Brenton: Yeah. The way I normally explain this at clinics is when … Lets say you’ve got a baseball. You’re asked to throw it as far as you possibly can. Do it without rotating your hips and your shoulders or you can just use your arm, so there’s no rotation through the body. See how far you get it. Then, once you’re allowed to open up through your hips and your upper body, you’re going to get that ball so much further. You think of someone pitching a baseball. It’s that effect. That’s the serape effect in action.

Carl Reader: Exactly. We have that in the golf swing as well but as you said baseball. All pretty much ball sports, throwing, it’s used. We’ll touch on exercises that the guys can do and do in the gym as well because it’s something that’s … I often see incorrect placements of the position on the land that actually goes counterbalances to serape effect.

Brenton: Yeah, right.

Brenton: Lets get into some of that. Where should we start? Maybe some of the exercises that people can do to start to develop this in their movements.

Carl Reader: I mean, there’s so many but one of them is even just boxing. If you were to have punching gloves on and you were punching a bag you wouldn’t just punch just with your arms, you would be using your whole body. If you can picture that.

Carl Reader: Then the other thing is things like lap pullbacks. Not lap pulldowns in the gym where you’re sitting down but where you actually have the cable in front of you and you’re pulling. I’ll do some videos for you like last time and share that with the guys but just basically where you are standing in front of the machine and then pulling the arm back, if you can imagine, so like pulling it all the way back behind you.

Carl Reader: I’ll go into some of the technique stuff now because it’s really important is a lot of the positions that people stand, they stand with their feet in line with one another. They’ll stand square to the machine. You’ve got no balance on the sideways plain but if someone was to come and push you forwards or backwards you wouldn’t have that stability. Your not in a good position and then what happens is you stand in what they call a split leg position, where you have your left leg in front of your right leg. Very often many of the guys who are doing this in the gym their legs are too split. Now you have front and back support but now you don’t have the lateral support.

Carl Reader: One of the major players that are working in the body there are your obliques, your side rotational muscles and your abdominals. If there’s any sort of instability in balance then that seems to be a major handbrake for you to actually generate power. That correct in the position is important. The correct position is to stand slightly splits and just about shoulder width apart. I’ll document that in the video and just show people the correct position because that plays a major part of getting the abs and the whole system to work properly.

Brenton: Yeah. I like that.

Brenton: One of the things that I do in clinics with people, one of the final drills we do, it’s almost like a single arm freestyle drill with a slight variation to it but when they’re doing this drill one of the things we have to adjust for most people is we’ve got to get them to actually reach forwards first. Reaching forwards with their arm before they start pulling. Open up through that opposite hip, so rotating the hips. That’s getting that lengthening of the muscles and getting on the side a bit because if they don’t get that reach forward with the hand and lifting up through the opposite hip they’re not going to get that serape effect. Once they do make that change you see their stroke just … Or their distance per stroke increase massively because of it.

Brenton: Then I think doing this stuff on land is a really good way to get this stuff happening in the water a lot better.

Carl Reader: Absolutely.

Brenton: Is that the first thing that you’d start with? Is the position of people?

Carl Reader: No. Well I think getting them to really understand because we’re talking about athletes here but the majority, a lot of the listeners, may not be athletes. It’s actually doing where you’re teaching them a single … Swinging your arms. Even just walking where you’re not just swinging the arms, where you’ve got the whole body moving. Then you go into these punches, where you sort of horizontal punches out in front of you. Left arm back, right arm punching forward. Then teaching them to bring their hips as well, to move the whole body, like we’re talking about with the hips.

Carl Reader: The same with doing a shoulder press. When you take a shoulder press exercise and you take lightweights. As they’re punching up into the air actually the whole hip moves to the left. As the right arm goes up, as if you’re doing a reach in swimming, your left hip should be turning to the left-hand side as well, it should be opening up. That’s quite a good exercise to also to do with the swimmers to get them used to this idea of, “I’m not just reaching my arm out. The whole body is moving.”

Carl Reader: Then, obviously, if you were going to do the pulldown to correct some of the effects for swimming you’d stand under a cable, like a lap pulldown machine and get them to pull down but not just pull down with their arm. But pull down and twist their hips at the same time.

Brenton: Yeah, nice.

Brenton: Would you be using these more to train the full movement? Getting all these muscles to work together, especially in the beginning obviously, but is it more about getting the muscles to work together rather than trying to strengthen that movement or is it a combination of both?

Carl Reader: It’s a bit of a combination but I think to start off with you’ve got to build a coordination. You’ve got to get the guys feeling, “What does it actually feel like?” I think your analogy of throwing the ball is also great. They can actually feel like you don’t need to go and strengthen hectic muscles to throw the ball. You can actually see the effects straightaway by turning the body. Just getting them to feel like, “Well if I put in a 10 K weights, and I use my arm, and then I use my body I can feel that. It feels much lighter and more efficient.”

Carl Reader: You don’t want the movement … That’s what we’re training. You don’t want the movement to be disconnected, which we see a lot in golfers. They try, and flip their hips, and all. Then they lose their connection with their arm and then all … You’ll have your swimmers directing their thoughts towards their hips and they’ll forget to pull. You know?

Brenton: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Brenton: I find it’s … It can take a little while to develop that. Especially if they haven’t currently got that in their stroke that coordination it’s going to be pretty awkward for two or three weeks at least but they’ll probably find, over the course of a couple of weeks, they start to get it more and more. They notice when they get it. They feel like, “All right man, that was good. I could feel that flow coming into the stroke.”

Brenton: What I find with freestyle that can help with people. The progression, in a way, that they can go through is, first of all, you want to make sure that you’re reaching out enough, and you’re rotating your torso, and your hips correctly. Generally, it’s going to be about 40, 45 degrees through your shoulders, rotation side to side. The hips will be about 30, 35, roughly that. A bit less than the shoulders. Now if they’re in that position then they’ve got a good chance of having that serape effect come into play but what can help them in freestyle is to really make use of it you want to get your catch, the downwards tipping of the hand or the fingertips, get that to sync up with the downwards kick of your leg on the same side. That’s going to help initiate that rotation to the other side.

Brenton: If you can get the correct rotation, you can get the catch and the downwards kick to sync up, then it’s going to make everything a whole lot easier. I find that they’re two things that you need to have in place to get the effect of it. Otherwise, you’re … It’s going to be hard to do.

Carl Reader: Yeah. No, and I think like you said, if you try … Sometimes teaching it step-by-step can be confusing because we tend to think … A lot of people are so over analytical, their mind gets stuck on … If you tell someone to throw the ball. Then you said, “Well before you throw gently rotate your hips to 30 degrees. Now rotate” … It’s like you know, if you just said, “Just throw the ball.” Then they go, “Oh well, okay. You want me to do this.” Then you go, “Yes.” Then they get the movement.

Carl Reader: I mean, that’s where your coaching, you can see straight away this is actually confusing the person. It’s funny because it’s such a natural movement. It’s just that we’ve been so programmed, by the fitness industry, to isolate movements. I think that’s why we’re trying to get back to functionality again.

Brenton: Yeah. Yeah.

Brenton: It kind of goes along with well just overthinking things in general but as soon as you’re thinking too hard about a movement you’re going to lose the timing of it. Well I think it’s some of these movements you might want to do slowly, like with some of our catch drills and so on, you want to do them slowly so you know that you’re in the right position and you can make sure that you’re there but then when it comes to actually bringing that into your normal stroke you want to back off some of the thinking side of your brain and go a bit more for feel. Especially for this serape effect. You will feel when it’s happening. If you can just try and replicate that feel as often as you can, as opposed to thinking really hard at trying to do it, you’re going to be so much better off going for that feeling side of things.

Carl Reader: Well I mean if you surf or you do any sports that require those coordination you’ll find when you get into that zone … Not in the zone. That feeling. You’re not trying hardest. For surfing you’re letting the wave drive you. If it’s golf it feels like an effortless shot, you’re not forcing it.

Carl Reader: I always tell my clients, “When you watch professionals it looks effortless and that’s because it is effortless. They’re not expending a lot of energy. Unless it’s weight building or they’re having to do some sort of … Like a rugby physical task.”

Carl Reader: But I also want to touch, Brenton if we can go there, is some of the roadblocks, or not roadblocks, handbrakes to the serape effect. I’m not sure if your listeners would be interested in that?

Brenton: Yeah. That’d be great. Lets get into it.

Carl Reader: You mentioned the overthinking. We know that the right side of the brain is the analytical side … Sorry, the left side of the brain is the analytical side. What happens is that when people are trying too hard to try to improve a technique it primes the right hand side nervous system. They actually avoid left side so your whole left side’s compromised. You’ll find that they’re pulling too hard on the right side and the left side’s not getting … You may even find, in swimming, that they can turn their head easy to the right but not to the left. That also may be a postural thing or just not a coordination thing but you’ll find that they tend to get tight on the right hand side and that effects the whole left hand side. That’s quite an interesting thing because you want both sides to be working pretty efficient.

Carl Reader: You’ll find, we talked about this before as well, but you’ve got asymmetries in the body. That can be postural, it can just be many things. Their daily works, maybe they got one leg longer than the other. There’s a lot of things going on there but you want that serape effect to be maybe 55, 45. You don’t want to have 70% on the right side and 30% on the left hand side. Especially if you really want to improve your technique and be competitive.

Brenton: Looking at that so there’s issues functionally and with my ability, with a lot of people that will restrict their ability to put this into place and put this in evenly on both sides. Is that what you’re saying?

Carl Reader: That’s what I’m say. Yes. You’ll find some people say, “I’m just so much easier to do on my right hand side and so much harder to do on my left hand side,” or, “I feel so like … I don’t feel like I can coordinate or get the right muscles working.” That’s part of what I do with my guys is saying, “Well okay, lets just find out where those handbrakes are because even though your technique might be right, if the muscles are not firing you’re not going to feel that effect.”

Carl Reader: Back pain’s another one. Tight hamstrings. These are things that can really lockup and stop that serape effect happening because remember your hamstrings play a big role in knee and hip rotation. It’s just trying to piece together the puzzle and find out why they’re not getting that movement. Hip flexors. I know you are aware of those. Those can really lock out the serape effect because that’s where they start so we need to look at, how can we release those hip flexors? Also, rotation is such a big part of the serape, like you said, just rotate your body. Any rotational, so the hip rotation and what I find is your upper back is where your rotation generally takes place in the body, in the back. If it’s tight through that middle thoracic spine you really find that serape effect’s greatly diminished.

Brenton: Oh completely.

Brenton: There’s two things I want to touch on there. The first one is that thoracic mobility. I’ve found this when I’ve traveled a lot or been driving a lot and also just carrying the kids around. My thoracics are about 50% down on what they would normally be if I’m feeling good and flexible. It’s just, I can’t recover as easy. I can’t rotate as easily in the stroke. I think that’s absolutely key, especially for swimming. I know a lot of physios who have worked with the Australian Swim Team and top level swimmers. It is one of the primary things that they look at, is that thoracic mobility. I mean, most of those guys are fine but especially among the people who are just swimming recreationally it’s a big one.

Brenton: That hip flexor mobility as well. With the stroke, when we look at people kicking, a lot of the times they can’t lift their leg up enough in the up kick to where the thigh always stays below the hip line. Basically they’re creating drag on their thighs because they can’t lift their leg up high enough. Starting from the glutes and then using the hammies a bit as well because they’re so tight there.

Brenton: I think if you can have decent thoracic mobility, decent hip flex mobility it just frees you up to do a lot more in the stroke and get this serape effect happening. I know that’s a big chunk of what you do with people, where you are, and also online. The functional movement screening.

Brenton: Can you go into a bit of detail with, I guess, the process that you go through with people to analyze where they’re at with their functional movement? Then the way that you go about helping them make those changes that they need to?

Carl Reader: Well it’s just starting off with their biggest problem. They’ll say to me that their hip flexors are tight, or they don’t know why they can’t generate power, or for their chronic shoulder problem. Then we just generally look at what exercises they’re doing. I’ll often just look at their technique. They say, “Well Carl I’m doing squats, I’m doing this and I’m doing the lap pulldowns like you said.” Then I’ll have a look at them and say, “Well your feet are in the wrong position. Your knees aren’t soft. It’s quite clear your thoracic spine is very stiff and you’re trying to generate power from your arm. There’s no mobility going through the thoracic core,” the upper back for those who aren’t familiar with the medical term. Really just guiding them through that.

Carl Reader: Also, I do a lot with the mind and the body. Like I say to them, “Are you trying hard here?” They say, “I’m a perfectionist. I got to get this right.” You hear, especially with professional athletes, “I’ve got to get this right. I’ve got to get this right.” I just try to, like you say, go back to feeling. Suddenly they’ll say, “But now my whole body feels so much looser. What have you done?” I say, “I haven’t done anything. I’ll I’ve done is point to you where the roadblock is or where the handbrake is.”

Carl Reader: Often with the hip flexors is it’s quite an emotional muscle. This is why we’re finding a lot of people, besides just sitting for long days in cars and chairs, it’s more than that. Is that we find the emotional link quite powerful. I say to my clients, “Are you doing hip flexor stretches?” “Oh I’ve been stretching my hip flexors for years.” I say, “Well how’s it going?” They say, “Oh it’s making a difference but it’s not really making a difference.” I say, “Okay. Well we need to look at … We’ve got to look at your posture. We also got to look at the mind side of things as well.” I think sports psychology and things, it’s a major player.

Carl Reader: I cover all those topics. I don’t go into too much into psychoanalysis but I just try to point to them the very common things that go through people’s minds that can lock them up.

Brenton: Yeah, you’re talking my language. One of the things that I like to get an understanding of is, what are some of the beliefs that people have about swimming and about their swimming? We see that a lot of the faults or the issues that will come out in their technique is because of these beliefs that they have about what they need to do in the stroke. Also just their general approach mentally to their swimming. For example, sometimes people … One big one, for example, is the recovery. When the arm’s coming over the top of the water people have been told, “You need a high elbow recovery. Get a high elbow recovery.” They see that as you need to bring your hand close to your body, get the elbow up nice and high. It just throws their whole body out of whack. Especially if they’re tight through that thoracic movement.

Brenton: It’s like, number one no … Well you don’t want a low or a dropped elbow recovery but just be open with that recovery. Get that hand out wide. Give yourself some freedom to move. That’s going to free you up. That is going to have this domino effect with the rest of the stroke. So things like that.

Brenton: Also with the catch. As people are moving the catch phase of the stroke, we talk about that as the setup phase. Don’t worry about the power there it’s all about get yourself in a good position, then you can start to build up the power. Just getting them to relax there. Again, that can be one of those things that is a handbrake for them.

Brenton: In terms of mindset it’s like some people put so much pressure on themselves to swim fast, or to improve that they end up thinking too much, or trying to hard and not allowing themselves to go with the flow and feel the stroke. Swimming is so much of a feeling sport that being up in their head too much will often stop them from improving their swimming.

Brenton: Yeah. I think we’re on the same page with that sort of thing.

Carl Reader: Yeah.

Brenton: Was that something that you’ve always coached or was it something that you saw as you were working with people more and more?

Carl Reader: I think it’s something … I mean I love my sports. It’s something I’ve experienced in my own body. I’ve really seen the effects of just working on the mind, the thoughts. Just working with … I’ve been in the medical biz now for over 18 years, just working with patients and people who are just a recurrent ITB bands, and their recurrent hamstring problems, recurrent … It just seems like we’re putting a plaster on the … We’re getting into this, what we call myofascial stretches now. We’re trying everything. It seems like we’ve got a shotgun approach. I know that sounds a bit controversial but we’re trying so many things to get people right and there are definitely results but I mean often we’re not getting to the simple things. Like you say, trying too hard. We’d rather stretch the hamstring … I mean, the hip flexor like till we really get it to burn or we just … Whatever we do but we don’t realize a simple thought of just changing … Just take the foot off the gas with the trying too hard and you’ll improve like 15% just like that. You know?

Brenton: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah.

Carl Reader: The other thing, which is important, is posture. We’ve talked about that before but is where … Also, can help the guys is getting the order of the exercises right. It’s trying to first prime the nervous system. That all starts by getting the spine to better alignment. You’re doing movements, maybe if you’ve got a hunched over posture you’re doing some gentle extensions in the right position and then you go into, what I talked about last time, the squats. The squats. I love the squats because it’s one of those things that’s like if your cellphone, although we’ve passed those times now, but in the olden days and your phone didn’t work you’d switch it off and then back on again. The squat does that with the spine. It just gets everything back into position quite quickly, if done correctly.

Carl Reader: Then from there you take them through mobility rotation exercises. Once the spine is in better alignment. A principle I have there is you always want to align vertically before you start aligning rotationally. If your spine is not vertically in a good position, too much flex forward or too extended, then your rotational components are compromised. It’s really just guiding the guys into that position saying, “We’re not going to get it perfect in one session but lets, before you start your gym session or land session lets just get your spine into a much better position so that you can then do those rotational exercises.”

Brenton: Yeah. That’s something I’ve come back to a lot, especially in the last six to 12 months as we’ve started to develop these core principles. Number one, you’ve got to be able to breath correctly and relax. If you haven’t got that then it doesn’t matter how good you are at the other things you’re probably going to get tired pretty quickly.

Brenton: Then the second thing is finding your balance. A big part of that is the posture, that you just mentioned. I’ve put a lot of focus into that with my own swimming but particularly the guys that I’ve been coaching. If you get your posture right, you get your breathing right, and you can relax you’re half way there because you’re just going to be able to apply so much more power, and just use the correct muscles, and be so much more effective with them.

Brenton: I think while it’s really … I guess it can be fun … Yeah. It can be more fun to work on some of the sexier aspects of the stroke, like the catch, and the pull, and all this other stuff, if you don’t have those key fundamental things in place then you’re really fighting a losing battle there. That’s why I think the stuff that’s functional and fundamental movements, that you have a big background in, I think that is the best place to start. Especially for people who may not have been doing a lot of exercise. They might have 10 years off or 15 years off and then just gotten into it now. Maybe, what, because their kids have grown up and they’ve got the time or if it’s just something that they’ve picked up because they want to get fit. Those that haven’t been moving or exercising continuously since they do it then it’s even more important because if you can’t move correctly then that’s when the injuries will come into play. It’s going to sit you out for a couple weeks, or a couple months, or even longer.

Carl Reader: Exactly.

Carl Reader: I think, like you said, also the … Something we see that’s amazing is body awareness. That just … You ask the average … Especially with the men, they just seem to be very disconnected to their body. I mean, obviously elite athletes are more in tune with their bodies but you ask them to lift up their arm and you say, “Do you feel anything.” They say, “Yeah a little bit.” Then you say, “Well how does your shoulder feel?” “Well actually it’s really, really sore.” I’m like, “I wonder why they didn’t tell me that in the first place,” or they can’t give you an idea of how high they’re lifting.

Carl Reader: I think, men in particular, are so goal driven that they just focus on the result and not paying any attention to the functional, the form or the movement. They’re just, as long as they can bash out three sets of 10 at an exercise then they’re happy it’s done, it’s a tick. I’m telling the guys, “Maybe just go even lighter. Really pay attention to what muscles do you feel working?” Often they’ll say to me online, they’ll say, “I never even thought about that. I’m going, “Well this is the whole point. I want you to be able to tell me, do you feel the glutes more than the hamstrings? Do you even feel their core?” They go, “Well not really. I feel like my quads are doing everything.” I say, “Well they are doing everything and that’s the problem.”

Carl Reader: Then you go, and you do your foam rolling, and all your treatments, and stuff but you actually got to pay attention. It’s very hard in the pool but you can also get the guys to … They can go, “Actually I do, I feel like my hammies are overworking in the pool.” Yeah.

Brenton: Well yeah. We had a camp in Hawaii back in March. A friend of mine, Annie [Joan 00:29:02], she’s a swim coach based in Boulder. She came out and did some coaching there. She took one of the open water sessions. I’m a guy, I’m probably guilty of focusing more on the technical details and not tuning into my hippy side as much, I guess, so to speak. Annie is very good at explaining the … Or using analogies and getting swimmers to think about things in a different way. Using stories and using cues to tune into how their feeling.

Brenton: One of the big things she spoke about there was the swimmer who’s having the most fun is winning. Just going, especially in open water, go out there and enjoy it. Just have fun out there and appreciate what an awesome place we were getting to swim. All this sort of stuff. Having that sort of mindset is going to be much better in the long run than going out there and just focusing on get from A to B as quick as you can. I mean, obviously there’s a balance to both but tuning into that feeling side can help a lot. I think swimming is one of those sports that it is all about feeling.

Carl Reader: Yeah. Like you say when you tune into that feeling side then your right brain kicks in. That’s more on the right hand side of the brain. Then you’re getting a really good balance because it is, it’s a balance you need. You can’t just be pulling hard on the right side and then inefficient on the left side. You want to try and get that balance. If there was some way we could strap electrodes to you while you were swimming and actually get an idea of the force generation from left versus right. The swimmer that gets that pretty much in that range, where it’s 45, 55, even 60, 40 I’d be happy with but you’ll see that often it’s more than that. It’s like 70% right hand side 30% left hand side. As they start to enjoy the swimming, that almost the nervous system naturally just goes into that balancing of the system.

Brenton: Yeah.

Brenton: Do you … With the athletes that you’ve worked with face-to-face or online, what’s been the general timeline for them to see a difference in their sport, in terms of their results, how they’re feeling? Is it weeks, is it months or does it differ depending on what those things that they need to work on are?

Carl Reader: When it comes to technique it can be straight away. If it’s a postural position, if it’s running we look at their analysis and we say, “Your foot’s in the wrong position,” or, “Your head’s not looking … You’re not looking the right direction … Or not direction. Position.” Then it can be straight away.

Carl Reader: When it comes to muscles it really can also be quite quick. From a postural point-of-view, long-term, you’re looking at least maybe three to six weeks before you really see that overall change through the muscles but the retraining of the pattern can be quite quick, like three weeks. Especially if they incorporate it in every area of their life. Even closing a sliding door at home or picking up something and then start to incorporate that serape effect just by doing things around … Then it becomes … It accelerates that. If they’re just doing it at gym once a week it takes longer, obviously.

Brenton: Yeah. I look at my three year old and just the way he squats to pick things up. It’s like perfect form. Then I try and do it. I’m way too tight through my hips, and through my achilles, and everything else but it’s yeah, just trying to do that stuff day-to-day is really beneficial.

Brenton: Thanks very much for joining me on the podcast. For any athletes who are listening to this and you might have some niggles in your shoulders, or your knees, or your hips, or you feel like you’re just very restricted in some of the movements that you do, I’d recommend going to … Well getting in contact with Carl.

Brenton: Where can people find you and what’s the best way to get in touch Carl?

Carl Reader: Yeah I have a website. It’s this African website. It’s CarlReaderCoaching.co.za. That’s Carl with a C or they’re welcome to email me at [email protected]. That’s, obviously, Carl with a C again. I usually respond pretty quickly. Any questions they have about their training is most welcome.

Brenton: That’s awesome.

Brenton: With those videos we’ll put some of those on the website EffortlessSwimming.com and link to your website as well.

Brenton: Thanks again Carl. It’s been great having you back on. I’m sure you’ll be back on again too. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Carl Reader: Most welcome Brenton. Thanks for having me.

that system that you’re doing as you as you start to turn the hip and drop it down the other side. Like you mentioned, it just primes all the lats and the psorias and tear and all the muscles that are used to actually do that catch and pull. And it just it just makes it much more effective and powerful as opposed to just sort of keeping that sort of still and then just putting the arm down, which is only sort of the end of the chain of the movement. 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 134. I’ve got a guest from a previous episode, episode number 123, Carl Rita from South Africa. So Carl, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Brent. Thanks for having me back again. It’s my pleasure. And you I did a video recently on the Serapa effect, which is a way to increase the the power through part of your stroke, using some some primary muscles through the trunk. And I sent an email out about it. And you replied about some exercises and ways that you’ve used to develop the the ability to use that Serapa effect with clients. So that’s primarily what I want to talk about today. And your background is obviously in functional movement and exercise physiology. So you’re the you’re the main man when it comes to this kind of stuff. So I’d love to get your your take and your experience on developing this Serapa effect in swimmers and how people can use some dry land exercises to do it. So we might

start off with, you know, what’s what’s your experience with with the with this kind of movement in in athletes, whether they’ve been swimming or other sports?

Well, you know, it’s as you said, it’s a functional, it’s actually a highly functional movement. And what we found in the past, and just for the training and the whole sort of philosophy is, you know, it was generating power from one part of the body. So like if you’re doing arm wrestling, you would just use your arm. If you’re going to do golf, you just sort of swing the arm as hard as you can. And we’re now we get into that position where we’re realizing that it’s so it’s so connected. It’s a kinetic chain. And so we’ve really been on this thing of when you use the whole body, if you can imagine, like, I hate to bring this always to the forefront, but like if you watch often men punch, you’ll see that they wind up their whole body. And if you watch women often punch, you’ll see, obviously, they’ve been trained to punch, but it’s just a natural thing. They sort of just use their arm, they don’t generate that sort of power, unless

they’ve been taught to do that. I don’t know why that is, but it’s not a discrimination, but you’ll see that difference very clearly. I’ve got a five year old boy and you what you say, throw the ball and you see what he winds up the whole body, where the little girls just sort of throw it along, you know, just using their arm. And so that that’s kind of where we get moving towards us is why is getting that whole body to twist and generate power as opposed to just getting a single joint to generate power. And I guess we should probably talk a little bit more about what the Serapa effect is before we go into it in too much detail. But I might give my take first in in swimming, and then maybe your take overall from all the different sports that you do. So basically, one of the the ways that you can generate more more power through the stroke is when you’re basically you’re in freestyle, you’re reaching forward and extending with one

arm out in front, you want your opposite hip to be lifted up. So you’re basically lengthening the muscles through your kind of through your hips, through your your midsection through your core, all the way up to kind of up to the ribs. And as they’re they’re lengthening, you’ll start that the catch and the kick and you’ll start to rotate to the other side. And it’s this contraction and shortening of the muscles that give this sort of snap back effect to get this nice sort of drive forwards to the other to the other side. And it’s really that sort of that flow and that nice rhythm that you see really good swimmers have. And it’s it’s how you can basically just take a lot of the a lot of the effort out of just really trying to muscle your way through the stroke with your arms. And you can really use your your your trunk and your your whole body to generate speed and propulsion. So that’s kind of my take on it from a freestyle or a

swimming perspective. What about you? How’s how was my interpretation of it? No, it’s a great good interpretation. I think you see it with the with the turning of the hips, you you bring in you sort of start the flow of movement you started you get that you power up you almost prime the core system. And it’s important for the distance understand you’ve got different systems in the body. And so that that that system that you’re doing as you as you start to turn the hip and drop it down the other side, like you mentioned, it just primes all the lats and the serratus interior and all the muscles that are used to actually do that catch and pull. And it just it just makes it much more effective and powerful, as opposed to just sort of keeping that sort of still and then just putting the arm down, which is only sort of the end of the chain of the movement. So you having to really generate as much power as you can through your

shoulders, as opposed to all the power you’ve lost by priming that system. Yeah, and the way I love the way I normally explain this at at clinics is when let’s say you’ve got a baseball and you’re asked to throw it as far as you possibly can do it without rotating your hips and your shoulders or you can use is your arm. So there’s no rotation at all through the body. See how far you get it. And then once you’re allowed to open up through your your hips and your upper body, you’re going to get that ball so much further like you think of someone pitching a baseball. And it’s that it’s that effect. That’s the Serapa effect in inaction. Exactly. And then we have then the golf swing as well. But as you said baseball or pretty much ball sports throwing its its use. And we’ll touch on exercises that the guys can do and you know, do in the gym as well. Because it’s it’s something that’s often see the incorrect placements of the position on the

land that doesn’t that actually sort of goes counterbalances the Serapa effect. Yeah, right. So let’s let’s get into to some of that. So what where should we start maybe some of the exercises that people can do to start to develop this in their in their movements? Yeah, I mean, it’s so many, but one of them is even just boxing. Like if you had a few were to have punching gloves on and you were punching a bag, you know, you wouldn’t just punch just with your arms you would be using a whole body. If you can picture that. And then the other thing is, you know, things like lat pull backs, not lat pull downs in the gym where you’re sitting down, but we actually have the your the cable in front of you. And you’re pulling up, I’ll do some videos for you like last time and share that with the guys, but just basically where you are standing in front of the of the of the machine and then pulling the arm back if you can imagine, so like pulling

your elbow back behind you. But I’ll go into some of the technique stuff now because very important is a lot of the a lot of the positions that people stand to stand with their feet in line with one another. So they stand square to the machine. And so you’ve got no balance on the sideways plane. But if someone was to come and push you forwards or backwards, you wouldn’t have that stability. So you’re not in a good position. And then what happens is you stand in what they call a split leg position where you have your left leg in front of your right leg. And very often many of the of the of the guys who are doing this in the gym, their legs are to split. So now you have front and back support, but now you don’t have lateral support. And one of the one of the major players or muscles that are working in the body there are your obliques, your side rotational muscles and your abdominals. And so if there’s any sort of instability

imbalance, then that seems to be a major handbrake for you to actually generate power. So that correcting the position is important. And the correct position is just is to stand slightly splits and about just about shoulder width apart. And I’ll document that on the video and just show people the correct position because that plays a major part of getting the abs and the whole system to work properly.

Yeah, like I like that. And we one of the things that I doing clinics with people. So one of the sort of final drills we do, it’s almost like a sort of single arm freestyle drill with a slight variation to it. But when they when they’re doing this drill, one of the things we kind of have to adjust for most people is we’ve got to get them to actually reach forwards first. So reaching forwards with their arm before they start pulling, open up through that opposite hip. So rotating the hips. And that’s getting that that lengthening of the muscles and actually kind of getting on the side a bit. Because if they don’t get that reach forward with the hand and opening and lifting up through the opposite hip, they’re not going to get that Serapa effect. And and once they do make that change, you see their stroke just or their distance per stroke increase massively because of it. And and then I think, you know, doing the stuff

on land is a really good way to transfer is a really good way to kind of get this stuff happening in the water a lot better. So is that kind of the first thing that you’d start with is the is the position of people? No, well, I think getting them to really understand because, you know, we’re talking about athletes here, but the majority of a lot of the guys, this is may just not be, you know, the athletes is actually just doing where you you teach them a thing where you sort of swing in your arms, even just walking, where you not just swing in the arms, you’ve got the whole body moving and then you go into the sort of sort of these punches where you sort of horizontal punches out in front of you. So left arm back, right arm punching forward and then teaching them to bring the hips as well to get to get to move the whole body like we’re talking about the hips. The same with doing a shoulder press like when you when you take a shoulder press

exercise, you take a light weight and as they’re punching up into the air, that they actually the whole hip moves to the left as a right arm goes up as if you’re doing a reach in swimming, your left hip should be turning to the left hand side as well should be opening up. So it’s quite a good exercise to also to do with the swimmers to get them used to this idea of I’m not just reaching my arm out, the whole body is moving out. And then obviously if you were going to do the pull down that would to create this sort of similar sort of effect for swimming, you’d have a you stand under a cable like a lap pull down machine and get them to pull down but not just pull down with the arm but pull down and twist the hips at the same time. Yeah, nice.

And so would you be using these more to train the the full movement? So getting all these muscles to work together, especially in the beginning, obviously, but is it more about getting the muscles work together rather than trying to strengthen that that movement? Or is it a combination of both? It’s a bit of a combination. But I think to start off with, you’ve got to build a coordination, you’ve got to get the guys feeling what what does it actually feel like? And I think you’re an allergy of throwing the ball is also great. You know, you can actually feel like, you know, you don’t need to go non strength and hectic muscles to throw the ball, you can actually see the effect straight away by turning the body. So just getting them to feel like, well, if I put on a 10k weights and I use my arm and then I use my body, I can feel it feels much lighter and more efficient. And you don’t want the movement and that’s what we’re training it, you

don’t want the movement to be sort of disconnected, which we see a lot in golfers that they try and flip their hips now, and then they lose they lose their connection with the arm and then all like you’ll have your swimmer sort of directing their thoughts towards their hips and they forget to pull, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it’s I’ll find it’s yeah, it can take a little while to develop that, especially if that if they haven’t currently got that in their stroke, that coordination, it’s going to be pretty awkward for two or three weeks at least. And but they’ll probably find over the course of a couple of weeks, they start to get it more and more and they’d notice when they they get it, they feel like, oh, man, that was that was good. I could feel that sort of flow coming into the stroke. And and what I find with the with freestyle that that can help with people to kind of progression in a way that they can can go through

is so first of all, you want to make sure that you’re reaching out enough, you’re rotating your your torso and your hips correctly. So

generally, it’s going to be about 4045 degrees through your shoulders, rotation side to side. Yes. And the hips will be about sort of 3035 roughly that’s a bit less than the shoulders. Now, if they’re in that position, then then they’ve got a good chance of having that serapa effect come into play. But what can help them in freestyle is to really make use of it. You want to get your catch. So the sort of downwards tipping of their hand or the fingertips, get that to sync up with the downwards kick of your leg on the same side. And that’s going to help initiate that rotation to the to the other side. So if you can get the correct rotation, you can get the catch and the downwards kick to sync up, then then you it’s going to make everything a whole lot easier. So I find there sort of two two things that you need to have in place to get the effect of it. Otherwise, you’re kind of it’s going to be hard to do. Yeah, no. And I think,

like you said, if you if you try and sometimes teaching it like step by step can be can be confusing, because we tend to think a lot of people are so over analytical that they sort of their mind gets stuck on. You know, if you tell someone to throw the ball, and then you say, well, before you throw gently rotate your hips to 30 degrees, now rotate it’s like, you know, if you just say just throw the ball, and they go, oh, OK, you want me to do this and they go, yes. And then they get the movement. So I mean, that’s where you’re coaching. You can see, you know, straight away like this is actually confusing the person. It’s funny because it’s such a natural movement. It’s just that we’ve been so programmed by the fitness industry to isolate movements. And I think we’ve got that’s what we’re trying to get back to functionality again.

Yeah, yeah. And that’s it kind of goes along with

well, just overthinking things in general. But as soon as you as soon as you’re thinking too hard about a movement, you’re going to lose the timing of it. So while I think it’s some of these movements, you might want to do slowly, like with some of our sort of cat’s drills and so on, like you want to do them slowly so you know that you’re in the right position and you can make sure that you’re there. But then when it comes to actually bringing that into your normal stroke, you want to back off some of that the thinking, the thinking side of your brain and go a bit more for feel, and especially for this Serapa effect, like you will feel when it’s when it’s happening. And if you can just kind of try and replicate that feel as often as you can, as opposed to thinking really hard at trying to do it, you’re going to be so much better off going for that feeling side of things. Well, I mean, if you surf or you do any sports that

require those coordination, you’ll find when you get into that zone, not in the zone, like that feeling you’re not you’re not trying hard. It’s just for surfing, you’re letting the wave drive you, you know, if it’s a, you know, it’s golf, it feels like an effortless shot. You’re not you’re not forcing it. And I always tell my clients when you watch professionals, it looks effortless. And that’s because it is effortless. They’re not they’re not expending a lot of energy unless it’s weight building or like they’re having to do some sort of like rugby physical task. But I also want to touch Brent if we can go there is is some of the roadblocks or not roadblocks handbrake to the Serapa effect. I’m not sure if your if your listens would be interested in that. Yeah, that’d be great. Let’s get into it. So you’re you mentioned the overthinking, you know, we know that the right side of the brain is the is the analytical side. Sorry, the

left side of the brain is analytical side. So what happens is that when people are trying too hard to try to improve a technique, it sort of sends sort of primes the right hand side nervous system. And so they’re actually they actually avoid left side. So your whole left side is compromised. So you find that they’re pulling too hard on the right side and the left side’s not getting so you may even find in swimming that they can turn their head easy to the right but not to the left. And that also may be a postural thing or a just not a coordination thing. But you’ll find that they tend to get tight on the right hand side and that affects the whole left hand side. So that’s quite interesting thing because you want both sides to be working pretty efficient. And you’ll find we talked about this before as well, you’ve got asymmetries in the body so that can be postural. It can just be many things that they daily works there. Maybe they got one leg longer

than the other. There’s a lot of things going on there. But you want that it’s a right pay effect to be, you know, maybe 5545 you don’t want to have like 70% on the right side and 30% on the left hand side, especially if you want to really improve your technique and get be competitive. So so looking at that, so there’s there’s issues sort of functionally and with mobility with a lot of people that will restrict their ability to sort of put this in the in the place and put it in sort of evenly on both sides. Is that what you’re saying? That’s what I’m saying. Yes, you’ll find some people say I’m just so much so much easier to do on my right hand side and so much harder to do on my left hand side, or I feel so like I don’t feel like I can coordinate or get the right muscles working. And and so that’s kind of part of what I do with with my guys is saying, OK, well, let’s just find out where those handbrakes are because you even though

your technique may be right if the muscles are not firing, you’re not going to feel that effect. So back pains, another one tight hamstrings are the things that really can lock up and stop that Serapa effect happening. Because remember, your hamstrings play a big role in hip knee and hip rotation. So, you know, it’s just trying to piece them together, the puzzle and find out

why they’re not getting that movement. Hip flexes, I know you’re aware of those. Those also really can lock out the Serapa effect because that’s kind of where they start. So we need to look at how can we release those hip flexes and and also rotation is such a big part of the Serapa. Like you said, just rotate your body. So any sort of rotational so the hip rotation and what I find is your upper back is where your rotation generally takes place in the lower in the body, in the back. If it’s tied through that middle thoracic spine, you really find that Serapa effects greatly diminished. Oh, completely. And there’s two things I want to sort of touch on there. The first one is that thoracic, thoracic mobility. Like I’ve sort of found this when I’ve travelled a lot or been driving a lot and also just carrying carrying the kids around like my my thoracic are about 50 percent down on what they would normally be if I’m feeling good

and flexible. And and it just I can’t recover as easy. I can’t rotate as easily in in the stroke. So I think that’s that’s absolutely key, especially for for swing. And I know a lot of a lot of physios who have worked with the with the Australian swim team and top level swimmers. And it is it is one of the primary things that they look at is that thoracic mobility. And I mean, most of those guys are fine, but

especially among the people who are just swimming recreationally, it’s it’s a big one. And and that hip flexor mobility as well. So with with the stroke and when we look at people kicking, a lot of the times they can’t lift their leg up enough in the the up kick to where their the thigh always stays below the the hip line. So basically, they’re creating drag on their on their thighs because they can’t lift their leg up high enough. You kind of starting from the glutes and then using the hand as a bit as well, because they’re so tight through there. So I think if you can get if you can have decent thoracic mobility, decent hip flexor mobility, it just frees you up to do a lot more in the stroke and get this serapa effect happening. And I know that’s that’s a big chunk of what of what you do with people where you are and also online, like the functional sort of movement screening. So can you go into a bit of detail with the I guess the process

that you go through with with people to analyze where they’re where they’re at with their functional movement and then the the way that you go about helping them make those changes that they need to. Well, it’s you know, just starting off with their biggest problem, you know, they’ll say to me that their hip flexors are tight or they don’t know why they can’t generate power or, you know, for the chronic shoulder problem. And then we just generally look at what exercises they’re doing and I will, you know, I often just look at the technique. They say, well, call I’m doing squats, I’m doing this and I’m doing the pull downs, like you said, and then I’ll have a look at them and say, well, you know, you’re feeling the wrong position, your knees aren’t soft. You you it’s quite clear your thoracic spine is very stiff and you’re trying to generate power from from your from your arm and there’s no mobility going through the thoracic call the upper back

for those on from the medical term. So really just guide them through that. And also I do a lot with the mind and the body. So like I said, you know, are you trying hard here? And they say, Oh, I’m a perfectionist. I’ve got to get this right. You hear, especially with professional athletes, I’ve got to get this right. I’ve got to get this right. And and I just try just to actually say, go back to feeling and and suddenly they will say, but now my my whole body feels so much looser. What have you done? And I said, I haven’t done anything. All I’ve done is this point to you where that where the roadblock is where the handbrake is. And often with the hip flex is is it’s quite an emotional muscle. So this is why we’re finding a lot of people, besides sitting for long days and cars and chairs, it’s more than that is that we find the emotional link quite powerful. And so I say to my clients, you know, are you doing hip flex or stretches?

I’ve been stretching my hip flexors for years. And I say, well, how’s it going? So it’s it’s making a difference, but it’s not really making a difference. And I say, OK, well, we need to look at we’ve got to look at your posture and also look at the mind side of things as well. I think, like, you know, sports psychology and things that it’s a major player. So I cover all those topics. I don’t go into too much into psychoanalysis, but I just try and point to them are very common things that that go through people’s minds that can lock them up. Yeah, you talk my language. I one of the things that I kind of like to get an understanding of is what are some of the beliefs that people have about about swimming and about their swimming. And we see that a lot of a lot of the faults or the issues that will sort of come out in there in their technique is because of these these beliefs that they have about what they need to do in the in the

stroke and also just their general the general approach mentally to to their their swimming. So for example,

sometimes people want one big one, for example, is the recovery. So when the arms coming over the top of the water, people have been told you need a you need a high elbow recovery, get a high elbow recovery. And they see that as you need to bring your hand close to your body, get the elbow up nice and high. And it just throws the their whole body out of whack, especially if they’re tied through that thoracic movement. And it’s like, all right, number one, no, well, you sort of you don’t want to a low or a dropped elbow recovery, but just be open with that recovery, get that hand out wide, give yourself some some freedom to move. That’s going to free you up. And that is going to have this this domino effect with the rest of the stroke. So things like that, also with the catch, as people are moving through the catch phase of stroke, we talk about that as the setup phase. And don’t worry about the power there. It’s it’s all about get

yourself in a good position, then you can start to build up the power. So just getting them to to relax there. And again, that can be one of those things that is a handbrake for them. And and in terms of sort of mindset, it’s like some people put so much pressure on themselves to to to swim fast or to to improve that they they end up just thinking too much or or trying too hard and and not allowing themselves to just kind of go with the flow and feel the strike and swimming is so much of a feeling sport that being up in there in their head too much will will stop them from will often stop them from improving their their swimming. So yeah, I think we’re think we’re on the same page with that with that sort of thing. And was that something that you

that you’ve always sort of coached or was it something that you that you saw as you were working with people more and more? I think it’s saying I mean I love my sport is something I’ve experienced in my own body and and I’ve really seen the effects of just your working on the mind, the thoughts and also just working with, you know, I’ve been in the medical business now for over 18 years, just working with patients and people who who are just just recurrent ITB bands and they run recurrent hamstring problems, recurrent. And it just seems like we’re putting a plaster on on the, you know, we’re getting into this, what we call my facial stretches now and and we we really just really we’re trying everything. It seems like we’ve got a shotgun approach. I know it sounds but controversial, but we’re trying so many things to get people right and there are definitely results, but we often often we’re not getting to the simple things, like

they say, trying too hard.

We’d rather stretch the hamstring is I mean, the hip flex a luck, you know, till we really get it to burn or we just, you know, whatever we do, but we don’t realize that like a simple thought of just changing like take just take the foot off the gas with the trying to hard and you you’ll improve like 15 percent just like that, you know. So the other thing is, which is important is posture. We’ve talked about that before, but is is where where I also can help the guys is it’s getting the order of the exercises right. So it’s it’s trying to first get the nervous prime and nervous system and that that all starts by getting the spine is a better alignment. So, you know, you’re doing movements, maybe if you if you’ve got a hunched over posture, you’re doing some gentle extensions in the right position. And then you go into what I’ve talked about last time, the squats, the squats, I love the squats because it’s one of those things that’s kind of like if

your cell phone, although we passed those times now, but we’re in the olden days and your phone didn’t work, you kind of switch it on and back on it often and back on again. And the squat kind of just does that with the spine. It just sort of gets sitting back into into position quite quickly if it’s done correctly. And then from there, you take them through mobility rotational exercises. Once the spine is better and better alignments and a principle I have there is you always want to align vertically before you start aligning rotationally. So if your spine is not vertically in a good position, too much flex forward or too extended, then your rotational components are compromised. And so it’s really just guiding the guys into that position saying we’re not going to get it perfect in one session. But let’s before you start your gym session or land session, let’s just get your spine into a much better position so that you can then do those

rotational exercises. Yeah, that’s that’s something I’ve sort of come back to a lot, especially in the last six to 12 months when we’ve, as we’ve started to develop these core core principles, it’s like, you know, number one, you’ve got to be able to breathe, breathe correctly and relax. If you haven’t got that, then it doesn’t matter how good you are at the other things, you’re probably going to get tied pretty quickly. And then the second thing is finding your balance and a big part of that is the posture that you just mentioned. And and I’ve put a lot of focus into that with my own swimming, but particularly the guys that have been coaching. And if you get you, if you get your posture right, you get your breathing right and you can relax. You know, you’re halfway there because you’re just going to be able to apply so much more power and and just use the correct muscles and be so much more effective with them. So I think while it’s really, I guess

it can be fun. Yeah, it can be can be more fun to work on some of the the sexier aspects of the stroke, like the catch and the pool and all this other stuff. If you don’t have those those key fundamental things in place, then then you really find a losing battle there. So that’s why I think you know, the stuff that this functional and fundamental movements that you have a big background, you know, I think that is the best place to to start, especially for people who may not have been doing a lot of exercise, they might have taken 10 years off or 15 years off and then just gotten into it now, maybe what because their kids have grown up and they’ve got the time or if it’s just something that they’ve that they’ve picked up because they want to get fit. Those with that haven’t been sort of moving or exercising continuously since you know, since they dot, then it’s even more important because if you if you can’t move correctly, then that’s

when the injuries will come into play. And it’s going to it’s going to set you out for a couple weeks or a couple months or even longer. Exactly. And I think, like you said, also to say that we see it’s it’s amazing as body awareness. It’s just you ask the average, especially with the men, they just seem to be very disconnected to their body. So I mean, obviously elite athletes are more or more in tune with their bodies. But you ask them to lift up their arm and then and you say, do you feel anything? And they say, ah, you are a little bit. And then you say, well, how does your shoulder feel or actually it’s really, really sore? And I’m like, I wonder why they didn’t tell me in the first place or they just they can’t give you an idea of how high they’re lifting. And I think, you know, they may not particularly are so goal driven that they they just focus on the result and not paying any attention to the function or the form of the movement.

They just as long as they can bash out three sets of 10 and exercise, then they’re happy it’s done as a tick. And you know, I’m telling the guys, maybe just go even lighter, really pay attention to what muscles do you feel working? And often they’ll say to me online, I never really thought about that. And I’m going, well, this is the whole point. You know, you I want you to tell me, do you do you feel the glutes more than the hamstrings? Do you do you even feel your core? And they go, well, not really. I feel like my calves are doing everything. And I say, well, they are doing everything. And that’s the problem. And then you go and you do your foam rolling and all your your treatments and stuff, but you actually got to pay attention. That’s very hard in the pool, but you can also get the guys to they can go actually, I do. I feel like I’m my hammers are overworking in the pool. Yeah. Well, yeah, we had a camp in Hawaii back in March.

And a friend of mine, Annie Jones, she’s a swim coach based in Boulder. And she she came out and did some coaching there. And she took one of the open water sessions and she’s and I’m probably I’m a guy. I’m probably guilty of focusing more on the technical details and not turning into the my hippie side as much, I guess, so to speak. But Annie is very good at explaining the using analogies and getting getting swimmers to think about things in a different ways. So using stories and using cues to to kind of tune into how they’re feeling. And one of the big things she spoke about there was the swimmer who’s having the most fun is is winning. So just going going, especially open water, go out there and enjoy it and just have have fun out there and appreciate what a what an awesome place we’re getting to swim and and all this sort of stuff and just having that sort of mindset is is going to be much better in the long run than going out there

and just focus on getting from A to B as quick as you can. And I mean, obviously, there’s a balance of both, but tuning into that that feeling side can can help a lot. And I think swimming is is one of those sports that it is all about feeling. Yeah. And like you say, when you tune into that feeling side, then your right brain kicks in, you know, and that’s that’s more on the right hand side of the brain. So then you’re getting you’re getting a really good balance because it is it’s a it is it’s a balance you need. You can’t just be pulling hard on the right side and then an efficient on the left side. You want to try and get that balance. If there was somewhere we could strap electrodes to you while you’re swimming and actually get an idea of the force generation from left versus right and the swimmer they get that pretty much in that sort of range where it’s 50, you know, 45, 55, even 60, 40, I’d be happy with. But you’ll see that often

it’s it’s more than that. It’s like 70 percent right hand side, 30 percent left hand side. And as they start to enjoy the swimming that almost the nervous system naturally just goes into that that that you’re balancing of the system.

Yeah, and do you with the athletes that you’ve worked with sort of face to face or or online, what’s been the general timeline for them to sort of see a difference in in their in their sport in terms of results, how they’re feeling? What is it is it weeks? Is it months or does it differ depending on what those things that they need to to work on? When it comes to technique, it can be straight away. So if it’s a if it’s a postural position, you know, if it’s running, we look at the analysis and we say your foot’s in the wrong position or your head’s not looking, you’re not looking in the right direction or direction position, then they can be straight away. When it comes to muscles, it it really can also be quite quick from a postural point of view, long term, you’re looking at least maybe three to six weeks before you really see that that that overall change through the muscles. But the retraining of the pattern can be quite quick,

like three weeks and one and especially then corporate and everyday life. So even, you know, closing a sliding door at home or picking up something and they start to incorporate that Serapa effect just by doing, you know, things around that then it becomes accelerates that if they’re just doing it at gym once a week, it takes long obviously.

And I look at my three year old and he and just the way he squats to pick pick things up and it’s like perfect form. It saves it and then I try and do it and my I’m way too tight through my hips and through my Achilles and everything else. But it’s yeah, just trying to do that stuff day to day is really beneficial. So thanks so much for joining me on the podcast and for any athletes who are listening to this and you might have some niggles in your shoulders or knees or your hips or you feel like you’re just very restricted in some of the movements that you do. I’d recommend going to well getting in contact with with Carl. So where can people find you and what’s the best way to get in touch, Carl? Yeah, I have a website. So it’s a South African website. It’s a call reader coaching dot co dot set and it’s called with the C all they welcome to email me at call wellness at gmail.com. And that’s obviously called with the C again.

And I usually respond pretty quickly and just any any questions they have about their training as most welcome. That’s awesome. And for with those videos we’ll we’ll put some of those on the website at effortless swing dot com and link to your website as well. So thanks again, Carl. It’s been great having you back on and I’m sure you’ll be back on again too. So appreciate it. Thank you. Most welcome, Brent. Thanks for having me.

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

The post Developing The Serape Effect with Carl Reader appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

My guest today is Ryan Roselli. He attended one of our freestyle clinics in Brisbane last March. During the Cairns Half Ironman, he managed to swim 5 minutes quicker than last year. In this episode we, talked about the things he focused on in his stroke, making the changes permanent and some advice to swimmers and triathletes who been wanting to improve their swimming.

16:12 Ryan’s Swimming Background
02:43 Attending Effortless Swimming Freestyle Clinic
03:55 Key Point Take-Aways From The Clinic
06:07 Locking Changes as a Habit
07:36 First Couple of Weeks
10:15 Curve
11:28 Race Day Focus
16:00 Swim Time Target for the Next six to 12 months
16:34 Advice to Swimmers Wanting To Improve Their Time
17:55 Filming Yourself

Transcription:
Brenton Ford: This is podcast episode number 133. My guest today is Ryan Roselli.

Brenton Ford: Ryan came to a freestyle clinic of ours in Brisbane in March this year. He had the Cairns IRONMAN or the Cairns Half IRONMAN.

Brenton Ford: Ryan messaged me the other day and he said that his time last year for the swim was 36 minutes. This year, after doing the clinic three months prior, he was able to get down to 31 and a half. Basically a five-minute improvement, or five minutes and six-second improvement, over the course of three months there.

Brenton Ford: I’ve got Ryan on the podcast today to talk about what’s the things he focused on in his stroke, how he went about making those changes, and how he to ingrain those changes as muscle memory and make it permanent. He also talks about what he focused on in the race and what advice he has for other triathletes and swimmers in a similar position, who are wanting to swim faster but they’re not sure how. Ryan gets into it by talking about what his swimming background was coming into triathlons.

Ryan Roselli: I didn’t really have any swimming background. I used to do some triathlon back at secondary school. My highlight being racing Dino Bozzone at New Zealand secondary schools way back. I was second to last out of the water so I’ve never been a strong swimmer and it’s just something that I’ve had to spend some time working on. Yeah. Certainly over the last year, two years, it’s all new to me really.

Brenton Ford: Is that when you started doing triathlons, two years ago?

Ryan Roselli: Yeah. I had a friend that did Cairns 2017 and I did half. I followed him in his race. I thought, “Well if he can do it then I can certainly do it.” After a couple of weeks of thinking about it, I decided to … I talked to my partner about it and I said, “This is what I wanted to do and have a crack.” She said she would support me.

Ryan Roselli: She came from a swimming background. Yeah. She said I should start going to the pool and start swimming. She said, “The first swim just starts on the pad. You’ll probably struggle.” I went to the pool and I swam two pan, I felt all right but I wasn’t breaking any records but it’s just been a build from there.

Brenton Ford: Take me back to, I guess, a couple of months ago. You first came to a clinic in March this year. Then you had Cairns in June. Take me back a couple of months ago. What made you decide to come to a clinic and start working on your stroke?

Ryan Roselli: For me, I’d never had any sort of coaching so I wasn’t many any inroads with my swimming. It was … My times weren’t really improving as much as I was trying to get quicker. Olympic races and all that stuff that I was doing locally, there was no change. I’d find I was just playing a game of catch up when it came to the bike and the run. I decided if I want to get any better at this then I need to start swimming better.

Ryan Roselli: I’d been recommended by others in my tri club to come along and give one of your sessions ago. I thought, leading into Cairns, it’s a perfect time. It gives me a good three or four months of lead-in work to work on whatever we covered in the clinic. Yeah, for me it certainly worked.

Brenton Ford: What were those things that you took away from the clinic? What were those key points that you ended up focusing on for the three months going into Cairns?

Ryan Roselli: My biggest one was probably putting on the brakes or personally that’s what I think. Coming into the water and my hand was just shooting back up to the surface. I think every single stroke was just slowing me down.

Ryan Roselli: I think from there getting on those train tracks. Straightening everything up. There’s a little bit of hand entry and breathing. I think to combine all of those things.

Ryan Roselli: At that time I’d been watching your videos as well so I was aware of trying to get my elbow in the right position for that catch. Elbow higher than the wrist. I was aware of that but it wasn’t until I actually saw it on video that I saw and I’ve actually veered away from that. Certainly focusing on the drills to dial that in as well.

Brenton Ford: What did you … Actually going back to when you came to the clinic and I look back at those videos, the video we took at the start and the one we took at the end when you were trying to make some changes there at the end because I think the main thing in that second video, at the end, that you focused on was entering further out and avoiding putting the brakes on. Even just that change alone, I reckon, that was one of the real main ones that just made the stroke flow a lot better. So much less drag being created and it just kept the speed up so you weren’t decelerating as much each time. Just, from my perspective, looking at that difference there, it’s like if you can focus on that for three months that’s going to be a huge difference.

Brenton Ford: You already had some pretty good aspects of your catch and pull in place, which was really nice to see. I think for you, looking at the stroke, there was just a couple tweaks to those things that you were mentioning. Like hand entry further out, don’t put the brakes on, don’t lift the head too much to breathe. Just tweaking a few of those allowed you to use those really good aspects in the stroke that you had.

Brenton Ford: What did you do to lock in those changes as habit and change that muscle memory because it’s easy to change something once but then it’s very easy to fall back into old habits. How did you make those changes?

Ryan Roselli: Yeah. Since the camp almost every single session that I’ve done by my open water I’ll get in and do 500 meters of drills. The five drills that I took away from it I’ll do. 50-meter drill, then just swim back with the fins on, with the snorkel on and focus on my stroke. Then going forward, and through my sets that I do, and training with the … Oh sorry. With the pool buoy and with the hand paddles I will do all of those with a snorkel so I can really focus on my stroke. I don’t have to worry about the breathing side of things. I think, for me, I’ve found really focusing on that stroke with the setup of the drills at the start to just … For me being able to remember the points that I have to focus on. Then going through the session focusing on the high elbow, and the catch, and the hand entry, and not putting on the brakes.

Ryan Roselli: Two or three times a week doing those drills has really helped me to actually implement it in a race situation.

Brenton Ford: How did you feel in the first couple of weeks? Was it one of those changes that made you feel better straight away or did it feel a bit unusual and worse? How was it for you?

Ryan Roselli: I think yeah my speed didn’t change initially. There were a few bits and pieces. Some of them felt good, some of them felt bad. Still, even now I try to focus on lengthening out and the head position that we talk about when you’re at the clinic. I still forget about that because it wasn’t one of my main points that I had to think of but I’ll be swimming along, and it’ll just come into my head, and I’ll make that change. Even still it feels weird to do a few of these things but it is starting to become more second nature, which is really good.

Ryan Roselli: Obviously, since then been watching videos and trying to implement a bit of the serape one you were talking about with Josh. Again, I forget about that and I don’t know the drills associated with that but I kind of … By watching the video I kind of understand the dynamics of it, and what it should feel like, and what it should look like. I’ll think about that half-way through a length and I’ll try to add that in as well. You can certainly feel the difference but for me, I think going forward, something like that there is really going to help take me to the next level as well.

Brenton Ford: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: Did you end up seeing an improvement in your times within those three months in training or it wasn’t until race day that you were able to see that difference?

Ryan Roselli: No most definitely. I was, I think, within the first week I already had a 200 meter PB. That was in the middle of a session, I was swimming faster than I typically would have swum, say, a 200 meter at the start of the session only two weeks earlier. I did have pretty immediate improvements.

Ryan Roselli: Then going forward noticing my 100 splits coming down as well in my speed sessions. Even in my more tempo sessions, my 400 and 500 splits were coming down. Then on weekends, I tend to go out and do an open water swim as well. Noticing across the board there as well, that those splits were coming down in 1,000 meters of 1,500-meter intervals. Most of my times I noticed within three to four weeks were starting to improve.

Brenton Ford: Was it a constant improvement or did you find on some weeks it would regress a little bit and then you’d be able to improve again or what was that curve like for you?

Ryan Roselli: Yeah. No, it certainly didn’t just keep coming down. Some weeks I felt really good. Then other weeks I would go backwards and I’d be like … I just had no rhythm. I can’t explain why that was but if you go back through my training piece, to where I comment to my coach, there’ll be a lot of that where I was up and down, and up and down. But if you look at a training graph, I suppose, of those three months you could certainly see bits and pieces coming down which was really big.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. That’s how I normally find it is. It’s over the course of time that improvement it keeps going but it’s this up and down where it will … Yeah, it often gets faster. Then you can slow down and feel like you’ve forgotten how to swim. Then the next week it might feel really good. It’s not always going to feel better. The main thing is just to keep … Like you did, just keep following the process and keep doing the drills. Keep that focus on the stroke and know that it’s going to happen over time.

Brenton Ford: Then come race day, you’re there on the starting line at Cairns, what did you think about in the race? Were you focused on your technique or did you just let it be where it was at, and you focused just on racing, and your pace?

Ryan Roselli: Started out wanting … For anyone that’s swum Cairns you know that the first half of the race is out, and into the current, and into the swell. I wanted to push a little bit harder going out. You obviously start off and then you start to get a bit more warmed up. For some reason, I decided not to do an in-water warm up this year but just focus more on strength training and getting my arms moving out of the water. A couple of hundred meters into it you’re starting to get into a good rhythm. Then you start to feel a little bit of fatigue starting to set in so it’s at those points that I really think back to, “Okay, what do I have to focus on with my stroke,” and try and get that high elbow catch. Focus on those changes that I had been working on in training over the last three or four months.

Ryan Roselli: Then you make the first turn, make the second turn. Then just a matter of coming back with that current and riding the current. Just try to increase the tempo a little bit. Get the arm turnover a bit higher. You don’t have to fight so much into the current, which was really good. Just enjoy the swim from that point.

Brenton Ford: Back in March what … Your time the year before was around that 36-minute mark and you’re down to 31 and a half this year. What did you think you were capable of doing in the race this year, time-wise for your swim?

Ryan Roselli: Pre-race I was hoping to dip just under 31 but with … There was … Well if you saw the weather leading into the race it certainly wasn’t conducive to fast time. Ultimately, based on the day, I think that there was a really good time. I had been saying to my coach that I wanted to swim low 30s, being 30, 31 minutes. I don’t think he believed I’d actually do it but I had the belief that I’d been working hard and I’d been pushing him to come along to one of your courses. I think he’s going to sign up probably for the next one that’s coming up.

Ryan Roselli: Yeah I think I had believed I could probably go into the 30s, low 30s. I was hoping for … I had said to people I was hoping for a five-minute swim per minute. Looking at my times it was five minutes and six seconds so pretty spot on to where I thought I was going to be.

Speaker 1: Oh well done. Was that just based on the times that you were doing in training leading up to the race or just roughly where you felt like you could get to?

Ryan Roselli: Probably a bit of both. If I looked at my swimming leading into Cairns 2018 compared to this year, from what I’d swim the year before, I’d done two seven and a half [pay 00:14:35]. I was swimming at an average pace of 142, 143 per 500 meters. Whereas a month before Cairns this year I was doing that and swimming 127 splits. I knew that I was about 15, 16 seconds per 100 faster. Most of my training done in the pool without a wetsuit. For me, a wetsuit does make a big difference as well.

Ryan Roselli: Going forward to my next race it was a big decision or a big part of the decision as to where I was going to race because it was a wetsuit swim.

Ryan Roselli: But yeah, obviously when you know you’re swimming faster in training you can do it. For me, I thought, “Well if I can swim that pace in training over, say, 200 then over the 1.9 K with a wetsuit it should be pretty similar in those conditions.” It did work out pretty spot on as to where I thought it could be.

Brenton Ford: Then in the next six to 12 months what are your targets for your swim time? What do you feel like you can get down to?

Ryan Roselli: Next race I’d like to dip under 30 if I can. As I said it’s a wetsuit swim but it is fresh water. I’m heading over to [Chongming 00:15:55] in Shanghai. My ultimate goal is to qualify for Taupo 2020. There’s a lot of work to be done. Obviously, if I can get another two or three minutes off my swim though I think that would go a long way to helping me. Then we’ll go from there.

Brenton Ford: For anyone who’s listening to this who’s wanting to improve their technique, or they’re in the process of doing that at the moment, what advice can you give to them? What would you recommend they think about or are willing to go through in that period of change? What advice can you give to people?

Ryan Roselli: I always wish I had gone to one of your clinics earlier. You spend all this money swimming every week. You got a pool membership, or paying daily, or whatever it is that you’re doing. If you don’t know what you’re actually doing then what’s the point? You could just turn up on race day if you’re not improving. I always wish I had probably gone a year earlier but for whatever reason … To be honest I probably didn’t even know about the clinic a year earlier but I wish I’d signed up earlier once I did find out about them.

Ryan Roselli: Then once you’re at the clinic just work hard and focus on it. If you can, swim an extra time a week, an extra session a week. That’s what I’m trying to do now, is fit in four sessions a week instead of three, which certainly go a long way with that extra swim fitness and strength as well.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. I think that … Four sessions a week can really help as well. Especially if you don’t come from a swimming background it’s the fitness, and also just the feel for the water, and developing the rhythm, and timing. It helps a lot with four.

Brenton Ford: I mean, even if you … We have a lot of people who listen overseas. I mean we mostly run clinics in Australia but I did a video … I put a video on YouTube yesterday about how to film your freestyle … How to swim your stroke if you don’t have someone there to record you. You can get these GoPro attachments in the water. Just even seeing what you look like in the water can be the first step.

Brenton Ford: I mean, I ran clinics for about three years until I actually filmed myself. It wasn’t until I looked at myself and went, “I’m not doing that. That is not me.” Then started that process of changing it over the last couple of years. Yeah, it makes a big difference once you actually see yourself because the perception is always very different than reality.

Ryan Roselli: Yeah. Very much so.
Brenton Ford: Yeah.

Ryan Roselli: I know there were a few guys in our office that we signed up to the corporate tri. It wasn’t long after the clinic. He was swimming at lunchtimes, and I just one day brought along my GoPro and filmed him, and he was just absolutely shocked as to what he was doing. He thought he was so much better than what he was. Even for him it … I got him onto your videos and he’s been watching those. He’s learned a lot just from watching.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. That’s fantastic.

Brenton Ford: Well thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. Well done on such a massive improvement. I want to preface it to say that for the five minutes … Yeah, five minutes is a big improvement in the space of three months. From doing the clinic to racing but it’s a huge testament to the training that you obviously put in, and the commitment to doing those drills, and doing it every time. Well done. I’m sure we’ll see you again in the future.

Ryan Roselli: Yeah. No doubt. I think I’ll be coming along with my tri club in a few months to get a followup filming session done and hopefully make some more gains before Shanghai. Thank you very much for all your help.

The post How To Take 5-minutes Off Your 70.3 Swim with Ryan Roselli appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Trever Gray is an HRV based coach who works with Olympians and amateurs, ensuring athletes are adapting to training stimuli optimally. He is also a professor of anatomy & physiology and nutrition at Tacoma Community College.
Join us as we talk about Heart Rate Variability, Respiratory Muscle Training and Blood Flow Restriction Training.

00:59 Trever Gray Introduction
02:22 What is Heart Rate Variability?
04:01 How do you measure HRV?
05:20 Overtraining or Undertraining
06:27 Using HRV Data in Training
08:17 Skepticism from Coaches
08:59 Managing HRV Data as a Coach
11:16 Is it for Everybody?
13:32 Respiratory Muscle Training
14:39 Breathing Exercise to Strengthen Respiratory Muscles
20:29 Breathing Exercises During Downtime
21:02 Blood Flow Restriction Training
23:57 How Often Can You Use BFRT?
25:25 How Safe is BFRT?

More about Trever Gray:

Website:
https://www.streamlinedswimcoaching.com/

Facebook:
Streamlined Coaching

Instagram: streamlinedcoaching

Transcription:

Brenton: Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Trever… We’ll start that again. Hang on.

Brenton: Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Trever Gray, and Trever is based in Tacoma, Washington, and he’s got a number of years of coaching experience under his belt, but he’s also a professor in a number of things, and I’ll let you talk a little bit more about that Trever, but I’ve got you on the podcast today to talk about really three key things. The first one being heart rate variability and how you can use that to know when to be able to push yourself in training and when to back off. We’re going to talk about how to breathe properly and how to train yourself, how you can improve your swimming performance using respiratory muscle training. And we’re also going to talk about blood flow restriction training. So Trever, welcome to the podcast.

Trever Gray: Brenton, thank you very much for having me. It’s good talking with you.

Brenton: So you have coached swimming for quite a number of years, but now, you’re a professor in a number of things. So can you talk a little bit about that and your background and I guess kind of what gives you the credibility to talk about all this stuff that we’re about to talk about?

Trever Gray: Yeah. Well first, I’ve been there. I’ve done swimming, and I’ve done a triathlon. Not that those who haven’t done the sport can’t coach, but I think it just gives you a level of understanding and connection to the athlete that perhaps they couldn’t think about or perhaps they couldn’t connect to the athlete with. So I’d like to think I have this well-rounded picture of what the athlete is going through, not only by doing it but then going back in older age and learning the science about it.

Trever Gray: And so, yeah. I’m a professor of anatomy and physiology and nutrition at Tacoma Community College. I just started doing that. I’ve been there a couple quarters now. And then I’m still having my finger in the coaching pool. I’m not coaching full time right now, but I am monitoring the physiological adaptation to training through heart rate variability with a number of amateur and professional athletes.

Brenton: Let’s go straight into the heart rate variability. So I’ve talked a little bit about it with another guest on the podcast, probably 12 or 18 months ago. For those that have maybe heard the term but don’t know exactly what it is, how would you sort of sum it up to people?

Trever Gray: So stress is cumulative. Every day we have symptoms of eustress and distress. And eustress is good stress, and distress of course is bad stress. And the brain doesn’t particularly know what the difference is in terms of distress. So if we’re having an argument with our significant other, and we’re training, and we are late for work, and we have traffic, that is cumulative, and that shows up in the expression of the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system that comprises our autonomic nervous system.

Trever Gray: And when we have too much stress, too much sympathetic tone, that can be measured through heart rate variability and what it is if you measure in a QRS wave. When we see those medical shows or movies, and people are hooked up, and you see the beep, beep, beep, beep, we can measure the time domain between the peaks of the R part of the wave, and then we collect data on that and do a bunch of number crunching, and that has been associated with your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. And so I can literally monitor the accumulative stress of athletes and people who don’t work out to make sure they’re positively adapting to the training.

Brenton: And how would someone go about taking this measurement?

Trever Gray: Well, it’s free. You could do it on your own. I mean, you’ve got to buy, couple of bucks for an app. It does take someone, in my opinion, with experience and training under it to really interpret the data. But there are a number of companies out there that can take heart rate variability. The wearables have not been validated yet in terms of measurement. I know the Oura ring… I think the Oura ring, is that how you pronounce it?

Brenton: Yeah.

Trever Gray: I think that one has been validated. I’m not aware of any other full-time 24-hour wearable has been validated. You can use a chest strap to measure heart rate variability, and then, of course, it has been validated to take a measurement on your smartphone through the camera. That has been validated against the gold standard, which is in the laboratory, measuring heart rate variability.

Trever Gray: And traditionally, you do it upon first thing waking in the morning. Your sympathetic nervous system will suppress itself during sleep ideally. And then right when you wake up, it will present itself, and the level of presentation of your sympathetic nervous system can give you a window into whether you’re over-training or not.

Brenton: And is it a sign as well of… Let’s say someone’s training three times a week, and it’s all pretty steady. Is it also going to show whether there may be stress from work or something else and that stress is getting to them so that they might be best to take that session easier? Is it a sign of both, all of those different types of things, or is it just over-training or whether you’re coping with it?

Trever Gray: No, actually under-training as well. So yes, it will show you whether you need to take an easy workout or an easy day. It tells you whether your physiology is ready to accept hard training or not. And if on a particular day, if it’s ready to accept the hard training, then yes, you would proceed as normal. You wouldn’t do the hard workout or even change it up.

Trever Gray: When I had a recovery day, my physiology suggests that I’m ready for hard training. Let’s go hard today. And so you can change it up. Or you can say, “Hey, you know what? My physiology is not ready to take on this workout. I’m going to take it easy today.” So it can tell you if you’re over- or under-training.

Brenton: So you’re working with a number of athletes and some very high-level athletes as well. What app are they using? How are they taking that data, and how are they working with their coach and you to use that data with their training?

Trever Gray: So I use the HRV for training platform developed by Dr. Marco Altini. I’m pretty sure he’s Italian. And he is constantly updating the app with what science has shown to be improvements in the app. Then he’ll adapt that to the app. And I find that app the easiest and most validated way to use HRV measurements.

Trever Gray: And so what I do is I have a list of all my athletes, and I will see who’s adapting positively and who’s adapting negatively. And if an athlete is adapting negatively, for example, I usually actually email or text, usually through text, an athlete almost every day. One athlete, I work with likes to know, hey, how am I doing? I feel fine, but how am I doing? I give him the reinforcement, which he really likes. And then on days where he’s not adapting, he will go to his coach and say, “Hey, my physiologist is suggesting that I need a little bit of rest.” And what’s the great part about it, is the coach listens to that, and we’ll adjust.

Trever Gray: And now going into world championships is coming up here, and going into world championships, he says he’s never been more ready for a big meet coming up than he ever… Or he’s more ready for the big meet than he ever has coming up. Usually, at this time of year, he’s beaten down. He cannot wait for taper, and he just wants to rest and get ready for the meet. But now he’s going into his taper with a fresh body and a fresh mind.

Brenton: Have you ever seen any pushback from coaches on it, or are you finding it’s becoming much more widely accepted from coaches looking at the heart rate variability?

Trever Gray: There’s definitely some skepticism about it. I mean, this is a relatively new technology. Last 10 years, it’s been developed to a point where we can take it every day at the consumer level and not in the laboratory. And so there’s some skepticism, but once they… They’ll say, “Okay, let’s give it a try.” And they see that it works. They see the benefits of it. And then they kind of eat it up, and they’re like, “Well, why aren’t all my athletes on this?” And so that’s kind of the stage that we’re at now is expanding upon the technology because it seems to be very beneficial.

Brenton: And from your end, how do you check how your athletes are doing? Does the app have a way for you to be able to get those results of your athletes?

Trever Gray: Yeah. So the app, any athlete, any consumer athlete, can get a daily piece of advice, and then they could follow that or not. And by the way, heart rate variability is not 100% accurate. The human body is highly variable, and it’s extremely complex. If you get a measurement during a day, that does not mean that, oh, no, I’m falling into over-training. I better stop training. No, that’s not what that means at all. It means that over the long term, and what we do is we look at the long term. We look at the longterm trends of your heart rate variability and then make educated guesses based off that. So actually, I’m sorry, I don’t know if I answered that question or not. What was the question?

Brenton: So have you got away as the athletes or physiologist to be able to receive all of that heart rate variability data from say 20 different athletes, and you’re able to just sort of keep on top of it. Is that how you manage it? Is there something set up through the app that you can receive all that information?

Trever Gray: So the app has a simplified view of your daily readings. And then the pro version, which I’m using the coaching version, I get additional insights into their physiology because you also ask a questionnaire both based on objective and subjective data. And then those are correlated with HRV. And then I could dig really deep in the data and make a guess on something, for example, sickness.

Trever Gray: So the same athlete I was talking about earlier, he had no change in training, no travel, there was nothing in his life that changed the stress except he had some dips in his heart rate variability. And I thought that was maybe a sign of him getting sick. I said, “Hey, do whatever you need to do, get some extra rest. Make sure nutrition spot on to not get sick.” And two days later, his HRV spiked back up. Now, whether he was really coming down with something or not, I don’t know. But we did take some precautionary measures, and it did seem… He didn’t get sick. So in my view, I could see additional information that allows me to make decisions like that.

Brenton: And for say the person who’s swimming a couple of times a week, whether they’re doing swimming or triathlon… Yeah, obviously triathlon there’s a bit more of a risk of over-training if you’re doing sort of half or full distance IRONMAN events. What sort of levels do you think someone should be at to be taking this stuff pretty seriously or looking at it? Is there sort of a minimum requirement, or do you think that everyone should be using it?

Trever Gray: Not only triathletes and swimmers but every athlete in every sport, in my opinion, should be using this, especially beginners because it’s so easy for beginners to jump into a new training program and overdo it. And then we get people who are injured or frustrated or… And beginners can accept different amounts of stress. So one beginner has to really ease into it. And some beginners, yeah, they could actually ramp up their exercise volume and intensity fairly quickly. And so in my opinion, we are still in the dark ages of coaching in every sport, and this HRV heart rate variability is the first insight into training adaptation that is noninvasive that we have. So yeah, in my opinion, every level, every sport should be using it, including kids.

Brenton: At what age do you feel like they should start using it?

Trever Gray: Soon as they’re doing three to four training a week, and they’re getting a little bit more serious so hopefully, 15 and over. I would hope that 12-year-olds aren’t that serious. But we both know in some sports, parents are having their 12-year-olds be serious.

Brenton: Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Absolutely. So heart rate variability is the first one. So HRV4Training, that’s the one that I’ve seen before, and I’ve got a good friend who’s a high-level coach, and he’s got a number of athletes on the Australian team. He does basically what you’re doing with a bunch of athletes. So he has all of his squad using that app every morning. They wake up. They get the HRV in the morning, and he can see that, and he can have a look and see whether or not they should be adjusting their training or not. There seems to be a big movement towards it, which is great.

Brenton: The next one is respiratory muscle training so basically breathing and how people can use this to enhance their performance in swimming. And I know that you’ve done a paper on this. I was sort of looking at that earlier. What are some of the things that have been proven to be beneficial in terms of respiratory muscle training for swimmers?

Trever Gray: Actually respiratory muscle training has been shown to be more beneficial for land-based athletes but swimmers as well. But the hydrostatic effects of being in the water have shown to improve respiratory muscle training. But we could still train the long muscles beyond what being in the pool does. And all respiratory muscle training is, it’s the same thing as just going in the weight room and lifting a weight for bicep curls. You’re training that muscle to improve its strength and resilience and to reduce injury rates in that muscle. Respiratory muscle training does the same thing. And you can’t put weights or dumbbells or plates on the breathing muscles, but we can do respiratory muscle training to have the same effect as being in the weight room.

Brenton: What’s one example of a type of breathing you can do to strengthen these muscles?

Trever Gray: Well, there are a number of apps out that you could just do some breathing exercises, number one, but respiratory muscle training provides resistance against the inhale and exhale, so you have to forcibly concentrate on trying harder to breathe. And these devices, you have to have a device to do it, have different levels. There are different settings so that you can increase the resistance you have on your lung, so that over time just like in the weight room, over time you can increase the strength of your lungs.

Trever Gray: And studies have shown that you get enhanced performance. One big one is the reduction of perceived exertion. So for a given level of effort, those who have done specifically inspiratory, which is the inhale muscle training, have lower levels of exertion at a given VO2 max.

Brenton: And so you’re asking about things like the PowerLung of…

Trever Gray: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Brenton: Yeah, things like the PowerLung basically just, yeah, restricts the breathing. And is that more strengthening the diaphragm than anything else or a number of other muscles as well?

Trever Gray: So there are three muscles that work in breathing. Basically, yes, the diaphragm is one and then the intercostal muscles, the external and internal intercostal muscles, and inspiratory muscle training work the internal intercostals, the breathing muscles. But you can also work on the exhalation too. The problem with exhalation is you can get a little bit dizzy when doing that. When you have that drop in thoracic pressure, you can get dizzy. So really, respiratory muscle training consists of more inspiratory or inhalation muscle training.

Trever Gray: And yeah, PowerLung is one. I use the POWERbreathe and full disclosure, I am not sponsored by any company. I’m not sponsored by HRV4Training or POWERbreathe. I use these products willingly and freely. So yeah, I use the POWERbreathe. I think they’re out of the UK.

Brenton: Yeah, I remember, I think it was probably 10 years ago, I remember my dad bought one. He was my swimming coach back then and yeah, and we used to… I was bit younger then, so we just used it for a bit of fun but didn’t really have a training program around it. But it’s quite tiring. After one to two minutes, you’re starting to feel like, all right, I’m ready for a rest now. How long do you do it for?

Trever Gray: Well, and you can do it for one to two minutes, but the research was studying two modalities of using it, of use. One was for 30 minutes, which to me seems way too long. One that’s more applicable is twice a day for 30 breaths. So you would do 30 inhalations twice a day, morning and night, and that seems to improve performance in those who are using it compared to controlled groups. I’ve been using it for awhile now and not only does it seem to have me warm up for the day, it feels really good to, morning just wake up your lungs. And I’m on now onto 50 breaths. I’ve kind of increased the resistance, and I’ve done 50 breaths, so I’m experimenting with doing more breaths.

Trever Gray: And for those who do decide to use respiratory muscle training, start off with the recommended amount, which is just 30 breaths or 30 seconds, twice a day at a really low setting. And then you’ll know. And I think everyone, again, everyone should be doing it. All athletes use their lungs. So in my opinion, all athletes in every sport at every age should be doing respiratory muscle training to improve performance.

Brenton: One thing that I’ve found to be quite useful too without any devices is, so I was driving for 19 hours, this was about four weeks ago. I was going on a family holiday, so I had a lot of time to kill in the car. And so I was just doing some different breathing exercises, and one of them was, I was trying to see how long I could do the inhale for, so just a very long inhale, and I got up to 90 seconds so just 90 seconds off of an inhale. It took me a while to get there. But yeah, I sort of started out at about 45 seconds and then progressively get to a minute and then a minute 15 and eventually got to about a minute 30 on the last one.

Brenton: So I found doing that with this slow inhale, and then I make sure that I’m starting from down low so using the diaphragm, filling in through the belly, and then it sort of expands up to the lungs. And by the end of it, after 90 seconds, my chest is out, my stomach’s out, and it’s sort of as big as I can get. And I find that that expansion of the chest and the stomach, for whatever reason, when I was training for the next four weeks after doing these exercises quite a bit over the course of a few days, I just found that my output could be a lot, or I could sustain a much higher output without feeling like I was getting tired. So I was just a lot more in control of my breathing. So I found that that exercise alone was hugely beneficial.

Brenton: So it’s something I’m going to keep doing, more when I’m in the car because you can’t really do it day to day or in the workplace. It’s a bit weird. But yeah, just focusing on your breathing is a huge one that I think is often not considered too much, especially compared to your typical weight training or whatever it might be because it’s the thing that we all just do subconsciously, but we never really stop and think about our breathing and control it. And I think this respiratory muscle training, and even just intentional breathing and long inhales, long exhales, I find that stuff can be very, very useful.

Trever Gray: You’re absolutely right. And that’s really impressive, 90 seconds. And before we move on, you bring up a great point in that we do have downtime. Hopefully, we’re alone because you’re right, you can’t take the POWERbreathe at work or on transit. But when we do have downtime, or you can’t work out on a particular day for whatever reason, you can use these exercise modalities to compensate for the missed workout. You could do breath training, and you can do occlusion or blood flow restriction training, and you get at least some training effect on those when we have downtime when we’re commuting. That’s a great point.

Brenton: Let’s talk a bit about the blood flow restriction training. So the only reason I’m sort of aware of this is I’ve seen Michael Andrew, a swimmer in the U.S., post a few pictures about this, but I haven’t really looked too much into it. So what is it, and how does it benefit people?

Trever Gray: So there are four names to it, and they’re all basically the same. It was invented in the ’70s under the brand name Kaatsu, K, I think two A’s, A-A-T-S-U. It’s a Japanese brand named Kaatsu. And then the common name is blood flow restriction. And then the medical or clinical terms are occlusion training or ischemic condition conditioning. And basically what you’re doing is you’re getting some bands, and you wrap them around the arms or legs, not necessarily at the same time, and you reduce the amount of blood flow back to the heart. You’re getting some blood flow to the muscles, but you’re just compressing pretty tightly the arms and legs so that you get reduced blood flow. And then you go exercise, and you don’t do it hard. It’s only at 30, 20, 30, maybe 40% of one rep max because it’s been tested in the weight room because that’s an easier way to test it. But you go light.

Trever Gray: And so I’ll use it in the pool, and you do it for about eight to 10 minutes at a session, and what the effect it is you get this metabolic profile that elicits strength and hypertrophy for those muscles being used in the exact way that you’re training for. So there’s a big debate on whether strength training in the weight room affects your swimming. Does it help or not? Well, this is one way to have direct increases in strength in the water is by using BFR training.

Brenton: So you’d put it at the top of your arms kind of just a little bit below the shoulders there. Is that right or…

Trever Gray: Correct.

Brenton: And then with the legs, would you put it at the top of the thighs or near-

Trever Gray: Yup.

Brenton: Just above, okay.

Trever Gray: Absolutely. And the one Michael Andrew uses is quite expensive, and it’s probably the most effective, but it’s really… They have extra resources, but it’s air compressed, so they could dial in the exact pressure that they need for any particular exercise that they’re doing, so they can go a lighter pressure or a stronger pressure. Whereas the bands that you could buy online for what, 20, 30 bucks I think I use, yeah, they’re called BFR bands actually. They have a number on them that you can use to dial in how tight you want these straps. And you get to the point where, man, your arms are heavy, and you could barely get your arms out of the water, or you’re barely kicking, and it feels like you’re at the end of a race, so it simulates something like that.

Brenton: That’s interesting. Right. And how often would you recommend people use it?

Trever Gray: I would say three to six times per week. What I’ve been using them for is I’ll do my main set, and then I’ll throw the bands on to kind of top of that metabolic profile that we get from doing a set, which we call fatigue. But what’s really happening is you get these metabolites from exercise that are used to then remodel the body, and you go and rest, and you get adaptation. And so I’ll use at the end of a workout, and then I barely do any cool down so that I keep that metabolic profile in my body for a longer period of time. Because if you do a long extended cooldown, then you’re flushing a lot of those signalers that cause adaptation to training.

Brenton: And you find it doesn’t affect you the next session, so you don’t feel, let’s say, heavy, like you would if you haven’t done a cooldown after the main set?

Trever Gray: Well, if you are training twice in one day in a 12 hour period, let’s say, then I probably would do it at the second session so that you can go home, eat, sleep, and recover. So I would save it for the afternoon session if you’re doing doubles. But if you’re doing one session a day, no, I don’t feel it at the next session because I got that 24 hour window to recover.

Brenton: Yeah. Interesting. So BFR bands. Okay.

Trever Gray: And I do want to say the safety of it is, it is safe. I mean, people like, “Well, aren’t you going to pass out?” And you’re like, “Well, no.” I mean, they’re not around my neck and so I’m not going to pass out. It’s around the arms and legs, and you’re not clamping down so hard that you’re completely reducing blood flow. So don’t go overboard on them and really reduce all blood flow. All you’re doing is restricting blood flow a bit.

Trever Gray: And for those that do want to implement it, start off light, and you may not even feel anything but start off for a week or two really light for 10 minutes and then begin to crank down or increase the tension on the bands if you want. But that was started… They have done clinical trials in the elderly population who were sick, and they could barely lift weights. And what they did is they occluded their arms, and they gained strength and mobility back from occluding their limbs, so it is relatively safe.

Brenton: And in terms of what you’ve got coming up the next six to 12 months, are there things that you’re sort of looking at, or what are you excited about in the next six to 12 months that you’re doing, and you’re focused on?

Trever Gray: Well, getting athletes prepared for the Olympics coming up in Olympic Trials here in the States is… Tickets went on sale today. So that’s in 12 months. And the other thing I’m working on is the term recovery strategies. Because when HRV is off, and I tell my athletes, “Hey, maximize your recovery strategies,” number one, I know that they don’t have recovery strategies. What does that exactly mean? And number two, what ways can we implement to increase recovery? So for example, sleep is a big one to increase recovery, but sleep what? And it’s been shown on a systematic review that sleep extension is the best way to recover more and increase your recovery strategies. And so I want to dive into that and kind of get a 24-hour optimized window of what we could do to train, recover, sleep, nutrition, and then you rinse and repeat for week in, week out, month in, month out.

Brenton: So by sleep extension as in going longer than what you would normally do.

Trever Gray: Correct. Yeah. And if you’re getting an average of seven hours, well, let’s increase it to eight or nine and allow the athlete to sleep in and not go to morning practice.

Brenton: Gotcha. Well, thanks so much for being on the podcast and where can people find out more about what you’re doing and get in contact with you? What are your social media handles and a website if you’ve got one?

Trever Gray: You can look me up personally at trevergray on Instagram, but my professional website is streamlinedswimcoaching.com, and that is also on Instagram or on the worldwide web.

Brenton: Awesome. Thanks so much, Trever, and I’d be keen to have you back on and hear more about how some of these guys go up to the Olympic Trials and qualifying and how you go with all of the heart rate variability stuff because I think it’s, yeah, it’s a really exciting thing to look at, especially for those people who are training a lot. And I know back in the day, I think when I was training eight, nine times a week, I could have probably used some of this as a way to rest when I felt like I was going to fall asleep. Well, I fell asleep in a lot of classes in school, so I think those could have been some good days to have a bit more rest. But I appreciate being on the podcast and sharing all of your knowledge.

Trever Gray: Thanks for having me.

The post How To Know When To Push Hard Or Back Off With Trever Gray appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Andre Obradovic joins us again in this episode as we talk about how to stop wasting your time and being more effective in your training.

00:53 Background on Being Productive
03:14 Structural Schedule
04:52 Today’s Plan Scheduling App
09:37 Factoring The Appointments
16:08 Sticking To It
17:08 Getting Back On Track
18:37 “I Can’t Do That, I Am Spontaneous”
19:02 Spontaneity
26:18 Being Conscious Of The Time You Are Wasting
28:35 First Steps

Andre’s Website:
https://andreobradovic.com/

Free Health App:
https://linktr.ee/andreobradovic

Transcription:

Andre Obradovic: Well, a couple of weeks ago, I took Facebook off my phone and that was phenomenal, and I’m not going to put it back on.

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

Brenton Ford: Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast, episode #131. my guest today is someone who’s been on a number of times, it’s Andre Obradovic. Andre, welcome to the podcast.

Andre Obradovic: Good day, Brenton. Hi, everyone. How are you?

Brenton Ford: Yeah, very good. Thank you. Our topic today is how people can stop wasting their time, they can get their training done that they set out to do, and how they can be more productive with their time. So, we’ve talked about a number of different things over the last, I guess it’s a couple of years since I had you on.

Brenton Ford: We’ve talked about sleep, we’ve talked about health, and now coming round to productivity. What is your experience in terms of being more productive? Because I know you’re very regimented guy and you have sort of, saying this, knowing you for the last couple of years, but what’s your background in being productive and helping other people with this?

Andre Obradovic: Sure. Okay. Well, I guess my background with being liking to have schedule was, I was in the military for 14 odd years and sort of, you never want it to turn up late for anything because there were severe consequences if you are late. Then, working in the corporate world, that sort of habit just went through. You’re always on tight timelines to get stuff done, everything was calendared, short meetings went over time.

Andre Obradovic: But as much as you could you sort of, or in my instance, I like to work with a pretty tight structure. So, I knew what was coming when I had to have work deadlines done. I find myself that over that, because I’m 54 now, right? So, I’m an old man. All of that life of having that structure has set me up now to really embrace having structure. I think it did, for me personally, it delivers a much better productivity; but importantly, because I train between 15 and 18 hours a week, it helps me be pretty much like 95$ or 100% compliant with all of my sessions that I set up and do.

Andre Obradovic: So, that’s sort of my background with structure and why it helps me both from a personal life because I run my own coaching business, whether it be triathlon coaching or marathon coaching or health coaching, so when you’re running your own business, as you know, there’s no one above you standing, cracking a whip, and there’s no “I’m going to tell you off if you don’t turn up to things. You just don’t make any money and you can’t buy food.”

Andre Obradovic: You’ve got clients to serve, and those clients don’t want you to be late and they want you to be on the ball and deliver for them. So in that instance, working for yourself, I find and training 15 to 18 hours a week, structures essential during the week. I sort of ease off on the structure a bit on our weekend, but we can talk more about that as well during the podcast, I guess.

Brenton Ford: So, what do you say is the typical structure or schedule or how do people typically plan their days or their weeks that you see when someone comes to you and they’re all over the place with their schedule?

Andre Obradovic: Well, it really varies. First of all, I think some people have structure and they use either- The thing that I say that I find isn’t very effective is where people have a paper diary, for example, their personal stuff, and then they’ll have work electronic calendar for their work stuff. So, they’re constantly juggling two different types of scheduling systems and invariably, that’s not very effective at all. So, I try and convince people to move to one system. And obviously, an electronic system, in my opinion, is far more superior, and having that system that it can work on a mobile device and a computer.

Andre Obradovic: Now, some people may be listening saying, “Well, shit. Doesn’t everyone do that?” Yeah, well I do, but I’ve got a lot of clients that still use a paper diary for personal stuff and a work diary for work and they haven’t thought about bringing things together. So when we make that shift, it does deliver less conflict, it delivers less noncompliance with training that they’re scheduling, but it also makes them less stressed because they’re not having to juggle two different things and it’s like they can look at one device or one screen and see what their day or week looks like.

Brenton Ford: And what’s your current system and what software do you use?

Andre Obradovic: Sure. Okay. Well, for my training, I use a system that’s built here in Australia called Today’s Plan. It’s a revolutionary multisport platform. For those triathletes that are listening that probably use Training Peaks, Today’s Plan is far more adaptable and flexible than Training Peaks. the reason I use that is it syncs straight into Google Calendar. So I use Today’s plan for all of my training and that’s what I use for all my athletes, and that can sync straight into Google Calendar.

Andre Obradovic: So, I use Google Calendar for all of my coaching work, and all of my training sessions automatically import in a different color, because you can set up the colors you want, so that when I’ve got my calendar open, whether it be on my phone or my computer and I’ll look at today or the week, I can see all the red sessions are all of my training sessions.

Andre Obradovic: If I go into Today’s Plan change your session from a swim that’s 3.6 K to 3.2 K, it automatically adjusts the times based on my threshold pace, and the way I’ve written a session, and it changes the time in Google Calendar; or if I drop a swim out from Wednesday and shift to a Sunday, once again, that frees up that time in my planning calendar with Google automatically. I don’t have to go in and reshape a whole lot of things.

Andre Obradovic: So, I use Google Calendar and I use Today’s Plan. Today’s Plan tech sessions come straight into Google Calendar and I can access that on my phone or my PC, and it’s very, very good for me to use.

Brenton Ford: One of the things that you do is pretty much schedule everything in your calendar day-to-day, and that’s travel, food prep, eating sessions, coaching. So, there’s almost not a minute there that’s unscheduled. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Andre Obradovic: Yeah. Well, I’m not a very spontaneous person, much to my wife’s horror. I guess my situation is a little bit different in that my kids have grown up. So, I don’t have the constantly changing to look after kids and things. So for people that like schedule or think they could be more productive with schedule, my approach might be able to work.

Andre Obradovic: What that approach is that, as you say, yes, I schedule pretty much everything because for me, it helps keep me calm. It helps keep me less stressed, and I want to avoid as much stress in my life as possible so I can be as relaxed and calm and train well because I don’t need extra stress on top of training stress.

Andre Obradovic: So, I schedule when I’m going to eat. I schedule when I’m going to travel to the pool. I schedule when I’m traveling back from the pool, I schedule when I’m going to eat it, when I come home, even showering and changing, I build all of that into my schedule so that I know it’s not just like a swim for an hour and 15 minutes to do three point whatever Ks. It’s actually two hours and 10 minutes or whatever because I’ve got a drive to the pool, I’ve got to drive home, I’ve got to then get changed or showered. I may or may not eat.

Andre Obradovic: They’re the things that help us know, “Okay, I’m at the pool and it’s 7:30 AM,” because I swim pro hours. I don’t swim at 6:00 AM, lucky again, very lucky. So, I know that if my first client meeting’s at 10 o’clock, I then factor in all the things I have to do before that in my calendar and I can see it.

Andre Obradovic: So, I can be relaxed during the session knowing that the session will take me an hour and 20 and I’ve got time. I’m not rushing. I’ve got time to do the things I need to do to be sitting at my desk five minutes before my client meeting or five minutes before I have to get to work if I was working in an office. It doesn’t matter that I train at different times. Whether you have a normal job and you have to be in the car by 8:00 to drive to somewhere, this planning process I believe is even more critical. So, I basically schedule everything except for going to the toilet.

Brenton Ford: So, when you do schedule all of that in, you’re not making these sort of separate appointments saying, “I’m driving for 30 minutes, eating for 15 minutes,” it’s just structured into that activity. It’s an hour and a half swim will be two hours, 10 because you’re factoring in the travel time and those other things around it.

Andre Obradovic: Oh, that’s a great question, Brenton. I’m more than happy. I’ll give you a screenshot of the process I use in terms of my calendar if it might help people.

Brenton Ford: Yeah, put that up on the website, that’d be good.

Andre Obradovic: Yeah, yeah. Just to remind me to do that. So, no. The first step for me, so pretend that my training is my work, right? Because it takes up 15, 18 hours a day. So, I plan my work and that’s what I call my training in Today’s Plan, and I build those sessions around consistent times of the days and days of the week.

Andre Obradovic: As an example, and this speeds up the process of planning. So, I do a four week training block and I know that every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday I’m swimming at either 7:30 or 6:45, or whatever time it is, and it’s the same for those four weeks predominantly and it rarely changes. The same with my bike sessions. I know that every Friday morning at 7:30, I do a bike session. So, I build the sessions in Today’s Plan, so I’ve got four weeks worth of training. They come into my Google Calendar.

Andre Obradovic: Then what I do, I close Today’s Plan and I get on Google and I’ve already got all my client meetings in. So, my other work where I make money, they’re pretty much in the Google Calendar already. My clients can book meetings with me in Google through Calendars if I’ve already got a training session or a client meeting booked. So, like if you’re at work, people can’t book a meeting with you if you have your permission set up properly, if you’ve already got a meeting in your calendar.

Andre Obradovic: So anyone that’s in a corporate world, so I do the same thing with my process is my training goes, in my client meetings that I’ve booked have gone in, client meetings that they’ve already booked go in, because they can’t overbook me. Then what I do is I sit and I say, “Okay, so on every Monday, I know that for the next four weeks, my training session starts at this time.”

Andre Obradovic: So then, I just make a reoccurring event. I don’t put my travel time and stuff in Today’s Plan. I put it in Google Calendar, but I look at the four week block and I say, “Okay for the next four weeks, I am doing the swim at this time on Monday and I am doing my gym session at this time on Monday,” and I just go in and make one entry for the travel and I make it a reoccurring event so it pops in for the next four weeks, and so on, and so on, and so on if that makes sense.

Brenton Ford: Yeah, that makes sense. And you also-

Andre Obradovic: It’s the same with feeding and eating, because I only eat twice a day because I low carb and I don’t need to eat more than that. So pretty much every day, I’m eating at 11:00, that’s my first meal. So once again, I go in on most days, depending on my training load, and I put in for four weeks, Monday to Friday, I put in a reoccurring event every day of the week, 11:00 until 11:45, eat. That just pops in and it’s in there for four weeks. If I have to make a variation, I can review it the week before and make some changes.

Andre Obradovic: Sorry to cut you off, Brenton.

Brenton Ford: No, no. Actually, just going off what you just said, so you look at it for four weeks-

Andre Obradovic: Yes.

Brenton Ford: Then, you’ll reassess it like a Sunday night. You’ll look at your week ahead and go, “Do I need to tweak it?”

Andre Obradovic: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Because I might have more clients that come on board or I might have a new client. I do knock back clients, but I’m not going to put my training in front of getting a new client, right? So, I might have to look at the week and say, “Okay, in fact, I’ve done that today.” I’ve started looking at next week and I’m doing some training sessions at Albert Park.

Andre Obradovic: Currently, my Wednesday bike session is in at 7:30 in the morning. Well I’m not going to be at Albert Park then. So, I thought “Right, I’ve got to snap next week and change things around a bit and shift it because I’m then going to go and have a cardio therapy session after that.”

Andre Obradovic: So every Sunday night or afternoon, what I do is I look at the next week and I do what I call a macro focus on that week and I compare it to my client meetings. But then, I also look back the week prior and I say, “Okay, did I have any non-compliances with training?” So, I open up Today’s Plan because I put notes in after every session. So if I was feeling crap after a session, if I was feeling great, if I wasn’t holding pace, if I was rushed, if I was stressed, I put that in the notes and I’ll put something like, “Got late to the pool, got stuck on on waste book or Instagram, wasted 15 minutes. Think about it next week.” Right?

Andre Obradovic: So, I look back at the previous week and say, “Where I screw up last week? I only had 90% compliance. What was the day I didn’t have compliance, what led to it?” Then for the session next week, I either adjust the timing or I put a note in my calendar saying, “Don’t be an idiot. Turn up on time or don’t take your phone.” You know? So, I know we can talk a bit about how to stop wasting time as well, but I find that very important to do that Sunday afternoon thing to re-snap the week because to help.

Andre Obradovic: Firstly, it helps you know that you’ve got your plan set; and secondly, it can help you sleep better on Sunday night because you don’t have all these things going through your head on Sunday night because you’re about to start the work week, and I know you and I have discussed that before about thinking about all these things that you have to do with work.

Andre Obradovic: I get in a process of I have dinner Sunday, come to my office, I said to my wife, “I’m going to be half an hour just setting myself up for the week.” I don’t go on social media, I don’t do any of that. I just do the calendar check in and I turn the computer off and I come downstairs, and that’s sort of like me saying, “Okay, work’s done for the week. I’m ready to start the next week.” I don’t have to go back tonight and think about it when I’m in bed.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. I’ve sort of been on and off with following this process and when I do it, and especially when I stick to it, it’s really satisfying. It keeps my mind at ease. The struggle I’ve had in the past is, is just sticking to it and setting aside sometimes 10 minutes to 30 minutes maybe for the week to structure it.

Brenton Ford: With my work, and with the young kids as well, some of that often gets pushed back or forwards, and some of these things get changed. I find that the biggest trouble for me is when that happens, when I’ve got something set for for two hours at 10:30 and I’m looking after the kids or something else comes up and then I don’t do that two hour block. I find it hard to get back on track for that day. So, what would be your solution or fix for that happening?

Andre Obradovic: It’s just thinking about the benefits that come from being more organized and how you feel when you have a good week. So, I sometimes sit and think to myself, “Gee, I’m spending a lot of time on my calendar and checking that I’ve got things organized and stuff.” And sometimes I do think, “Am I spending too much time doing that and is there a benefit?”

Andre Obradovic: But then, when I sit back and look at my training sessions and that 100% compliance week after week, or the fact that I’m getting eight hours’ beautiful sleep every night and I’m relaxed, I think it, for me, it’s an important tool. I’d be saying, if you are feeling that you have a better week when you make that 20 minutes to plan and structure, then maybe you should actually do it more often.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. I think that’s a fair assessment because I certainly find when things aren’t set in that in the calendar, they either don’t get done or they just get pushed back and they take longer. It’s definitely something that’s worth spending that time planning. So, yeah. What would you say to someone who would look at your calendar, and they’ll see it on the website, and they’ll say, “I can’t structure my every single minute there because I’m more spontaneous. I want to be able to do things on the fly.”

Brenton Ford: Can they structure in free time or can they structure in going to the movies or time where there’s nothing set? What’s your recommendation for people who feel like they want a bit of spontaneity in their week?

Andre Obradovic: Well, I do that. Don’t take it that by saying I structure everything in my day, doesn’t mean I have times where I don’t have anything in there. So as an example, I had an hour today in the calendar free before you and me speaking, and I went and sat down by the fire and had to think about what we were going to do. That wasn’t in the calendar, it was just an hour block that was free. So, that’s the first point.

Andre Obradovic: The second point is, I try and have nothing in their calendar on the weekend apart from sometimes I’ll do maybe one client meeting for someone who can’t meet during the week, and then I train on a Sunday. So, that is in the calendar. But apart from that, I don’t put anything in an electronic calendar for the weekend. I use a totally different system so I’m not feeling like I’m at work on the weekend.

Andre Obradovic: So, I use an old fashioned bit of paper. And on Friday night what I do is I sit down with my wife and I say, “Okay, these are the things” and I just sort of rule it into Friday and Saturday, old fashioned notepad and I just say, “Okay, I’ve got three hours of training on Sunday. I’ve got to teach a class on Saturday morning.

Andre Obradovic: Other than that, my times, hours, what do you want to do? What do I need to do for you? What do I need to get done at the house?” If we had kids, I’d be like, “Who’s taking the kids to football?” And then she’ll say, “Well, I’ve got stuff I need to do on Sunday morning, so can you train Sunday morning and then we have the afternoon together?” And on the sheet of paper, I just draw that up and I’ll leave it on the kitchen bench.

Andre Obradovic: So, that is about as spontaneous as I get. But back to your sort of question about what other people can do is, I would say when you planning in your calendar, one thing you could do is color code things. So, that’s why I use Google, it’s very good for that as well, is just right clicking and color coding what I would call really important activities and things that are not a high priority.

Andre Obradovic: And if you need to shift things, the things that you need to shift or make room for other things are those ones that aren’t a high priority. It’s a similar concept to key sessions, routine sessions, or optional sessions with your training. So if your listeners think that every session is a critical or a key session in their training, if they’re a triathlete, well that’s probably the wrong approach.

Andre Obradovic: So, even though I, and generally 100% compliant, if I feel like my week is chocking up and I need to drop a session, I have sessions in my plan that are critical key sessions that I must do and then I have sessions that I can drop out. You can take the same approach with things in your life as well, but I would always advocate having spare time in the calendar and it’s actually blocked as free time.

Andre Obradovic: So if you’re getting a bit stressed or a bit anxious about getting shit done, you actually allocate maybe towards the back end of the week, and this is what I do on a Thursday and Friday. I allocate time that’s just like blocked where clients can’t book me and it’s just a gap in the calendar that if I need to catch up on things or if I want to go for a walk or do something spontaneous, even though it’s sort of maybe not spontaneous because you’ve already got the time blocked, it’s more like here’s some downtime where I can do other things that aren’t necessarily in my calendar that have come up during the week. Does that sort of answer what you’re after?

Brenton Ford: Yeah, that’s good. That makes a lot of sense. I guess we’ll see color coding with the screen grab of your calendar. Is there a particular method or how do you color things with each aspect of your life?

Andre Obradovic: Oh, okay. Well, my training is all red, my client meetings are all yellow. Anything that involves sort of like business stuff, as in meeting with people about business, I color code in orange. Downtime, I usually color code in green. Finances and personal admin, I color code blue. So, I sort of just have a scheme so I can look at the week, I can actually look at the weekend say “Wow, there’s a lot of blue” or “There’s not much of green here.” Or like a couple of weeks ago, my program was pretty much client meetings back-to-back. I’m like, “Wow, that’s a lot of client meetings this week. I need to get a bit more balanced.”

Andre Obradovic: So whatever works for people I think, because I’m a visual person so I like to look at it and see how much training time there is, how much downtime there is, et cetera, and I use that color scheme and it sort of works for me.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. What are some things that you’ve done yourself to stop yourself from wasting time on social media or other things that you find are unhelpful in working towards the goals and the targets that you set for yourself?

Andre Obradovic: Okay. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I took Facebook off my phone, and that was phenomenal. I’m not going to put it back on. That’s the first thing. The other thing that I’m going to do is I’m going to allocate time because I have a business email and a personal email. So, I’m going to actually allocate time each morning to do personal email, like 10 minutes in the morning and then at the end of the day, and I’m not going to look at my personal email apart from those times. So, that’s something that I’m doing.

Andre Obradovic: When I’m sitting at my desk working on important stuff, I will often turn my phone off because if the phone’s on and I get a bit distracted or bored, I’ll pull the phone up and start looking at LinkedIn or Twitter or Instagram or whatever. So by turning the phone off, sure, no one can ring me, but that’s alright. There’s a thing called voicemail and no one, apart from my wife and kids, no one else is that important that has to get to me every five seconds.

Andre Obradovic: So, scheduling when I’m going to do personal email, but also, I’m also going to schedule when I’m going to do social media stuff. Now one way to do that is by using a scheduling tool because I run a business, but most people won’t. So if you’re just a normal person, I would suggest thinking about when you’re going to deliberately make a choice to waste time, and that means social media, right?

Andre Obradovic: Now, I’m not judging anyone, I’m on social media heaps. But one thing a mate of mine, Andy, has done is he has made a folder, I think you call it on your phone, and it’s called Wasting Time and he’s put all of his social media apps in that folder. So when he grabs his phone, he has to press the thing that says “Wasting Time” before he goes into social media. He says it’s made a huge difference to him because he sees that and he’s like, “Do I really want to waste time?” So, that’s something he’s done.

Andre Obradovic: I think for me, it’s been being conscious of the time I’m wasting, always having my calendar open because I have three 24 inch monitors on my desk, so having my calendar always open on the left hand screen with a line running down it in Google telling me what time of the day it is and where I’m at to make sure I’m sticking on track and I don’t get distracted, and just being present and thinking about, “Am I bored or am I on task, and how am I going to feel if I get all this stuff done that I have to get done today?”

Andre Obradovic: I guess the last one is, and I see this all the time, going to the gym or the athletics’ track or the pool and sitting in your car. “Oh, I’ll just check my phone before I go and train.” So, you and I have talked about this before. In winter last year, I hated swimming in the cold and I used getting on the phone. “Ah, look, I’ll just spend another five minutes here, five minutes here looking at Facebook or Instagram or doing emails.” Then all of a sudden, I’d only have 30 minutes to swim. I’m like, “Ah, I’ll just go and jump in the spar instead.”

Andre Obradovic: I was being a lazy shit. What I do now is when I’m going to the pool, I often won’t even have my phone on. It’ll just be in the car off in the glove box or in the console. Then when I get out of the pool and in the car, I’ll turn the phone on and it’ll automatically sync my Garmin data while I’m driving home. For me, that works really well as well. Turning the phone off before you even get to the pool so you’re not looking at that final like on Facebook, even though I don’t have Facebook, or answering that email that’s not important. You know what I mean?

Brenton Ford: For someone who’s listening to this, they are thinking, “This is something that I’d love to love to try and I think it could work for me.” What are the first couple of simple steps that people can do to start running their life this way?

Andre Obradovic: The first thing is if you’re running two calendars, paper one and an electronic one, think about how you can use, and I’m assuming most people work, think about how you can integrate your personal things into your work calendar. There are tools that allow you to lay Google Calendar into Microsoft and Apple Calendar systems that they have. I used to have do that when I had a real job. Or, there are plugins that let you have a shared calendar.

Andre Obradovic: So, that’s the first thing I’d think about. Or if you can only use a work calendar, use a work calendar and put your own personal things in there and make them private so people can’t see what you’re doing, but you can see it all in one device. That’s one suggestion. Get off two devices or different systems because it can lead into a whole lot of extra stress and mucking around. That’s the first thing.

Andre Obradovic: The second thing I would suggest is if people are wanting to be more organized because they’re not being compliant with their training, I’d sit and do some reflection on what is it that’s stopping them from making their sessions. Are they regularly missing specific sessions every week or is it once in a while, and what’s that about? Is it that they’re too fatigued? Is it that they haven’t had a good sleep? Is it that they screwed up their calendaring and I forgot that I have a work meeting?

Andre Obradovic: What is it about that? Or is it they’re not motivated? Now if they’re not motivated, maybe it’s because they’re training too hard or they got too much stress in their life. So maybe, cutting one swim out of the week. “God, oh my God. Everyone’s saying this guy’s an idiot,” but yeah, trust me. Cutting a swim out of your week or cutting or run and being less stressed might help you perform better is actually having a look at what’s causing that to happen.

Andre Obradovic: Because it might not be a technology issue with a calendar system or not knowing what you’ve got happening. It might be motivation, it might be stress, it might be not liking the group you train with, it might be a sessions aren’t challenging enough. You’re not making progress. It could be a whole lot of things. That’s from a training point of view, Brenton.

Brenton Ford: Yeah, that’s really good. Any final words or words of advice for people who are sick of wasting time and they know that they can do a lot better?

Andre Obradovic: Right. Maybe write down how you feel, how you feel about the time you’re wasting. How does it make you feel that you’re wasting the time? And if you think you’re wasting time and you’re frustrated by it, that’s a good thing that you actually acknowledge it. So, write down on one side of a page of paper write “Today” on the current situation, and then write down words that describe how you feel because of this issue of not doing sessions or wasting time or procrastinating, or whatever it is.

Andre Obradovic: And then on the right hand side, what you want to do is say “Future” and write down how you want to be, not how you should be or you need to be, but how you want to be, how you want to feel, whether it’s productive, whether it’s hitting the numbers, nailing a sessions, feeling relaxed, not feeling stressed. Having those words written in a positive tone, not a negative. So you don’t want to say, “Not tired,” you want to say “Energized, feeling really well.”

Andre Obradovic: Look at those two and then, get another sheet of paper and say, “Well, these questions, what’s holding me back? What’s the one or two things I can do this week to make a change? How will I feel at the end of the week when I’ve made those changes?” Just those three questions can open up a light bulb moments or insights for people to actually realize that making a change can help them be more efficient, more effective, be more relaxed, be more calm.

Andre Obradovic: And as I said, sometimes that means we need, as an athlete, to take a critical look at ourselves, and if we have a family and a busy life, is maybe sometimes we’re putting too much of a focus on our training. Maybe we could be more benefited by putting more time focusing on our family or our kids by doing less training, but making that training more effective because you’re nailing it and you’re hitting the numbers instead of going backwards in your training.

Brenton Ford: Yeah, it’s a good way to look at it. I know we’ve done that exercise in the past and it’s been really useful to just sit and reflect on what’s going well, what can be improved. Then, actually spending the time to dig a bit deeper into some of the feelings you might have towards yourself, or the way that you’re doing things, or what’s the actual cause behind some of them?

Brenton Ford: Because often, the problem you think you’ve got isn’t the problem. It may not be that you’re not scheduling your week right. It’s most likely something a lot deeper than that, about how you feel towards your training, or your job, or other things like that; and that’s something that I’ve found that you’ve been very good at asking the right questions to uncover that. Those questions that you just mentioned, some of those.

Brenton Ford: So, it’s really helpful to sit down with the right person and have them ask you questions with no judgment behind it, and just exploring those different things. So, I’d like to thank you very much for being on the podcast again. Where can people get in touch with you and find out more about what your currently up to and how you can help people with their training in their health and life?

Andre Obradovic: Great. Thanks, Brenton. Well, andreobradovic.com’s my website. I have a health and wellness app as well, which at the moment is free. They can download that by just searching my name on the Apple store and the Google Play store, Andre Obradovic. The app has a lot of content, recipes, podcasts, videos that come out every Wednesday.

Andre Obradovic: That is something that is probably the best way to connect, and I’ve just made some changes on that that’s going to be effective later this week where they can actually chat with me in the app to ask questions instead of being on Messenger. Because once again, I’m actually probably going to get off Messenger 100% as well.

Andre Obradovic: If people want to work or ask questions with me, it all comes through the app. So, they’re probably the two best ways. I’m all over Instagram. Instagram, LinkedIn if you’re more professional website. And if people are interested in working with me, I have a process where they fill out a survey around the three areas that I focus on. One being a body composition, the other being sleep, and the other being a endurance coaching using my approach, which is a bit different to most coaches.

Andre Obradovic: So, they’re the three areas that I focus on and I’d love to hear from people if they need a hand. And if not, I hope what we’ve gone through today, helps people make some changes. And then obviously, if they sign up to next year’s Hell Camp in Thailand, they’ll get to meet me because this year’s is fully booked out, I’m sure, already. So, the people that are listening for this year’s Hell Camp, I’ll be there and we’ll be smashing it in the pool together. But yeah, my website and the app are probably the best ways to get in touch, Brenton.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. Fantastic. We’ll have all those links on the website, effortlessswimming.com, and I’ll also have a screenshot of your calendar so that I’ve got a bit of an idea of the way you currently run it. Hell Week’s booked up for this year, but I was just thinking about next year’s camp and looking at the dates.

Brenton Ford: It’s going to be a lot of fun and always look forward to Hell Week over in Thailand. It’s a big week for the people participating, but it’s those sorts of weeks that really make it worthwhile. We’ve got so many people returning, which is awesome. I think more than 50% of the people coming back. So, I can’t wait for it and thank you again for being on the podcast.

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

The post How To Stop Wasting Time And Be More Effective With Your Training With Andre Obradovic appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Why It Pays Off To Follow The Process With Taren Gesell

Our guest today is Taren Gesell of the YouTube Channel Triathlon Taren whom we had two analysis videos. The video analysis was six months apart and over that time he really made some impressive improvements and continues to get better.

01:07 How Taren started with Triathlon and YouTube
04:07 What viewers get out off from the Triathlon Taren YouTube Channel
06:05 The Hero and the Guide
07:02 Interviewing Lucy Charles
09:08 Pool and Open water swimming
09:53 Stroke Changes for Open water Swimming
13:29 The Kick
21:46 Letting It Go
24:27 The Way You Do One Thing Is The Way You Do Everything
27:42 Focus On One Thing
33:40 ” I Had To Get Slower Before I Got Faster”
43:38 Have Some Adventure
47:42 What To Expect With Triathlon Taren

www.protriathlontraining.com
https://teamtrainiac.com/

Taren’s swim analysis on Youtube:
https://bit.ly/2FZM7wC
https://bit.ly/2WR9Gib

Transcription:

Brenton: Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Taren Gesell. Now, if you’ve been following our YouTube channel in the last couple of months, you will have seen two analysis videos of … It’s titled Triathlon Taren. But these are two videos where I analyzed Taren stroke and we did them about six months apart and Taren has made some pretty impressive improvements over that time and it just continues to get better. So Taren, welcome first of all to the podcast.

Taren Gesell: Thanks for having me. I’ve been excited to do everything we’ve done together. When you originally agreed to take a look at my stroke last summer in 2018 I was like, no way. This is going to be fun and it worked out really well. So I’m pumped to be on the call here.

Brenton : Well for those that are listening who may not know about you and your background and I guess you’ve got a big audience on YouTube and through social media, sort of following your journey in triathlon. What’s your background and how’d you get into it?

Taren Gesell: I got into … Well I guess a question, either YouTube or triathlon?

Brenton : Both.

Taren Gesell: Both. Okay. Well, I got into triathlon about 10 years ago and I was not a very healthy person as I was growing up. I had a family that our version of healthy eating was like chicken fingers and homemade Honey Dill sauce and the high end instant fries. That was our healthy eating as I was growing up. And in my early 20s I ballooned up to about 215 pounds and on a 5’8 frame, that’s not a very healthy weight. So in my early or mid-20s, I started gradually losing weight, but I was doing it through bodybuilding and eating boiled chicken breast and didn’t really know what I was doing. I got down to about 175 pounds, but it wasn’t healthy and I didn’t really enjoy it. I certainly didn’t enjoy the eating. I didn’t really enjoy the training because going and lifting dumbbells when I was really solitary by myself and grunting out like dead lifts, it’s not fun.

Taren Gesell: And thankfully I ended up getting fairly injured trying to do a max bench press. And that ended up basically ending for a few months, any sort of weightlifting that I could do. So I started walking on the treadmill one day and then I thought, “Oh, this is boring.” And then I intersperse walking on the treadmill with riding a stationary bike. And then I was riding the stationary bike one day and I look over at the pool and I went, “Yeah, I used to swim as a kid. I betcha I could go in the pool.” And I piece it all together and I remembered that there was a friend who I went to university with who I later found out was an elite, like top 30 in the world, under 19 kind of triathlete. And I called him and I said, “Hey [inaudible 00:02:58], do you think I could do a triathlete? That’s what I’ve been doing lately.”

Taren Gesell: And he went, “Yeah, absolutely.” I said, “Well, how do you do a triathlon?” And being [inaudible 00:03:06] he said, “Well, you enter the race and then you do it and that’s how you become a triathlete.” So that was how I got into it. And that many years later eventually kind of spawned into wanting to have a little bit of a creative outlet. So I started teaching myself how to make videos and I wanted it to be about something that I have the most fun with in my life. And that was doing triathlons. So I started this YouTube channel just kind of kicking around on iMovie and editing some movies on an iPad at first. And that was how it all started.

Brenton : And now you’ve got also 60,000 subscribers on YouTube. So it’s not a small audience by any means. And what do you feel like is really has drawn in the audience? Why do you think people like to watch your videos, what do they get out of them?

Taren Gesell: It’s hard for me to say because I’m not sure if it’s the fact that when I started there wasn’t that many triathlon channels out there. There was iron man, there was the world triathlon channel, and that’s about it. So for the longest time I was just kind of talking into a vacuum and that helped me grow at the start. But there is a-

Brenton : When was that? When did you start?

Taren Gesell: I started four years ago now, almost exactly. And there was a time about two years into it that all I was doing was just giving tips and I was standing in front of a camera just giving tips and I realized that it was kind of a one way conversation. So February 1st of 2017, we changed it to a daily video, which was kind of a vlog format and that’s when it really started expanding because I think people saw what I was doing for a living and they met my wife and they met the people that work with me. They saw my dogs, they saw that I was just an age group or like them trying to fit in triathlon to everyday life. And maybe I’d been in it more years. So I had a few more tips than they had. And it’s hard to say exactly why people tune in. I mean, I’m just kind of a short, slightly chubby guy that isn’t tremendously fast from a really cold country. So it’s still kind of shocks me when people tune in, in the amounts that they have that you mentioned there, it’s kind of baffling to me.

Brenton : And the reason I was sort of asking, yeah, what do people get out of it? I think I sort of asked that in a way where I know that you do give very good tips [inaudible 00:05:53] but it’s also very entertaining. You do it in a way that’s natural and you’re just being yourself and in a way, I think you’re very much the sort of guide. So that why I had it, I sort of heard it a few months ago was, you’ve got the hero and you’ve got the guide in a lot of stories and one of the things that people want to be is they want to be the hero of their own story. And if you can be the guide for them, if you can maybe point them in the right direction, then that’s a much sort of better way to be if you’re the sort of person in front of the camera.

Brenton: And I think you’re there to help people and also entertain and make jokes and all sorts sort of stuff. And I think you do a really good job at that. And one of the things that you’ve also done really well in terms of being the guide is you’ve brought in a lot of high level professional triathletes and high level coaches and you’ve had them on the podcast and on your YouTube channel and just getting all these different perspectives and sharing that. And one of those ones was with Lucy Charles where you’ve done some videoing with her and interviewed her and got a lot of information on what she works on with her swimming and what were some of the things that you learned from Lucy over the last couple of months?

Taren Gesell: Yeah, I got to spend about a week with Lucy and her new husband, Reece Barclay, who is really interesting to see the two of them together because one of the things that I ended up learning from them is how different an open water triathlon stroke is from a pool stroke because Lucy is this amazing open water swimmer that’s setting records and gapping the field with the best athletes in the world. Meanwhile, when she and Reece were growing up and they were swimming in the pool, Reece was way faster. He was a pure pool swimmer and you can see his stroke right now he’s got the really high elbow, recovery. He’s got a really strong kick, like very, very pretty. Whereas Lucy is kind of scrappy. And then when they went into open water, started taking up triathlon, all of a sudden Lucy was way faster and to hear and see them swim side by side and see the differences between their elbows, between their stroke rates, between shoulder driven versus hip driven between their kick. It’s like it’s a completely different sport and to see how different they are when they perform in the pool versus open water. It’s really neat.

Taren Gesell: And then also just the dedication of the amount of yards and meters that they’ve had to swim over the years to become that good is pretty inspiring.

Brenton: Yeah. And it definitely feels like a different sport, doesn’t it? When you go from just swimming in the pool to maybe doing your first open water race, you can get out of it and go, oh my God, what was that like? I remember the first water swim I did, I was about 14 years of age and I was good at distance swimming in the pool, but did my first open water swim and just got beaten by people that shouldn’t have beaten me. And I didn’t even know what siding was. No idea about any of that or drafting. I remember some of the parents talking about drafting and it took me three years to actually understand what that was. And it’s just completely different. So I think one of the things that helps with that is just getting the experience in the open water. You just can’t, you can’t beat the experience in training and racing open water.

Brenton: But then, there are certainly those stroke changes. And what sort of changes have you made in your stroke to go open water? Have you been able to change that in the last couple of years as you’ve gotten more and more experienced in racing?

Taren Gesell: Yeah. One of the things that I battle over the last about 18 months or so is I ended up developing a really, really long slow kind of catch-upy style stroke and I did this because one of the first big swim projects that I did, I want to say it was 2013 or 14. Basically when I became like a proficient swimmer, I wanted to set a bit of a mark in my life that marked a turning point in my life where growing up I was always quite afraid of the water. I overcame that as I got into triathlon and I want to have that stamp of approval that said, I’m not afraid of the water anymore. I’ve changed my life and I decided to do a 27 kilometer open water swim. And I did that and a few years later a couple friends and I, we did another open water swim. This one was 37 kilometers.

Taren Gesell: And in training for that, I trained myself just to go long and slow and be as loose and relaxed as possible. And what I developed was this long catch-upy glidy pausing like kind of a pretty pool stroke but really wasn’t very good for anything besides going long and slow. And over the last 18 months or so, I’ve tried to make that a lot scrappier, a lot quicker with the turnover. Tried to get that into the 70s and 80s, and sometimes even set the tempo trainer up to 100 and see if I can hold that for five or six strokes.

Taren Gesell: And also, in addition to just getting rid of that pause at the front of the stroke, having like firmer arms, I don’t really know a good swim term to describe it, but just being more forceful with the water instead of letting the water kind of turn me into a noodle and just going with it to conserve energy for those nine hours swims being more forceful and punchy. Which you, you commented on, I still have a long way to go, but if you had seen me two years ago, I looked like an 80 year old guy in the pool. That was just like, just out for like, “Oh, I’m out for a little little morning swim.” And I’m trying to get away from that.

Brenton: Yeah. And it’s been good to say those well, the changes. So we did the video late last year and then we did another video a few weeks ago. And if you haven’t seen it yet for those who are listening, jump on YouTube and jump onto our channel and you can see those two before and after videos and the changes are very subtle as you know, one of the things that you changed was you’d improved your kick where you were coming up higher on the up kick. Your heel was just breaking the surface and your thigh was coming up above the hip line and that allows you to have a bit more room and a bit more space to then have a more effective down kick and really subtle changes like that. Add up to a couple of seconds per 100 and to develop your kick, you’ve done quite a bit of work on keeping us through the core and just developing the kick overall. As I know your fellow Gerry Rodrigues’s Tower 26 workouts, what sort of stuff were you doing to help with your kick?

Taren Gesell: Yeah, that was really interesting. If you talk to Gerry or listened to Gerry’s podcast, I’m sure as anyone who hears it will hear inevitably that you aren’t really concerned about your kick as a triathlete. And then my first winter swimming with Gerry, all of a sudden there are sets where 70% of the set was kick and I’m like, “What is going on here?” And he coaches you through all of these workouts and he would explain that we weren’t really kicking for the sake of kicking, like from the sake of getting propulsion up and getting a lot of speed out of it and being able to kick like a one minute, 100 like elite swimmers can. It’s more to tighten up the body and tighten up that kick.

Taren Gesell: And it’s almost like a queue to activate your core because if you’ve got all these real loosey goosey legs that are going and scissor kicking and flailing all over the place and are separating a lot, you’re not going to be really tight in your core and you’re not going to have a lot of body awareness to … I compare it to being like a log getting pushed across the surface of the water. You can push that log across the surface of the water, even if it’s 10,000 pounds and you can push it across the surface of the water really quickly. But a pool noodle, even though it weighs one pound, you can’t really push it across the surface of the water very quickly because it’s all wiggly and loosey Goosey. So the kick was like developing your body from the toes up into that log. So we did a huge amount of kicking, starting with fins, a snorkel and a board. And then we gradually took away the board and then we gradually took away the fins and then we added the fence back in and went onto our side.

Taren Gesell: And then we took the snorkel away on the side and then we added in hand channel swimming with and without the snorkel, just all different kinds of variations of kick that as I was going through it, I’m like, I don’t think I’m getting any faster. And then magically when we started getting away from the pure drill work over the course of this past winter and actually getting into some real good fast pure swimming, my times, they just plummeted like three seconds off per hundred average, four seconds off per hundred average, 10 seconds off per hundred average. And it didn’t feel like I really changed that much when I sent you the video is like, I don’t know if there’s going to be much of a difference from six months ago, but to your trained eye you, you saw, I guess what Gerry had me working on and like you say it was subtle but really effective.

Brenton: Yeah. It’s so interesting isn’t it? I had someone in our membership who had a similar thing in terms of his legs. He had to work on keeping them closer together, more behind the body. They were just splaying out too wide on most of the strokes and like you’re talking about that or there sort of that Leanne loosey goosey behind the body and it was just creating a lot of extra drag. So one of the things that I had him do was wear a [inaudible 00:16:34] boy and band and just get used to keeping the legs in closer together. And he said for, four, and that was five weeks he practiced it and he just didn’t feel like it was making any improvement with it. It just, it was kind of like, I’m just stuck in this rut with it.

Brenton: And then two weeks after that he had this breakthrough moment where his times came down, it was five seconds per hundred for his normal swim sets. And it was a result of just focusing on the legs and what the legs are doing. So, while with a lot of triathletes, yeah, you’re not looking to work on propulsion with them, but you do need to keep them tight. You need to keep that kick effective and that leads into that tightness through the core. So it was really, really good to say because I had to look hard at, I’ve really had to look hard at what were the differences between before and after because they were so subtle. And I had to look at it a few times to see what those differences were.

Brenton: But it was just really interesting to me just as a coach to be able to see a couple months of work on the kick to then see what changes it actually makes when you slow it down on the video. So it’s really, really, really good. And so now one of the things … Oh, sorry, you go.

Taren Gesell: Oh well yeah, I had a question for you. Do you think that you would have had the eye to spot that different say five years ago, 10 years ago?

Brenton: No way. No, not at all. It’s over the last four years, four or five years is when I’ve really started doing a lot more video in with people and I’d like, even today I’m still learning and I still talk with other coaches and I like to get their take on things and they just helped me look for, to look at other aspects of the stroke and in more detail. And no, definitely not. Even two years ago, I don’t think I probably would have spotted that, or necessarily looked for it just because, yeah, I’ve, over the last couple of years has been or it would be at least 3000, if not 4,000 analysis videos that I’ve done with different people over the last few years. And it’s just the more you do it, the more you start to look at things. And this, I guess the easier it becomes. But yeah, it was … And I think taking the time to do it too where I wanted to make sure that I did a good job with this video and that I gave something that was sort of valuable for people watching.

Brenton: And so I really looked at it quite a few times to make sure that I was right in those, in those things. So, yeah, just that alone. And that’s another thing that kind of, I’ll add to my memory bank and then be able to use with other people who might be in a similar situation. So it’s, yeah, no, definitely not. I wouldn’t have seen it a couple of years ago. And our bank action, these two young kids, these two junior kids who I’m helping work towards getting a national time for some of their 1500 meter events and with their kick, well they weren’t doing much kick all in training. And that’s one thing that I’ve been coaching twice a week. 60% of the session is kick for them because especially for those pool swimmers is such a big part of the stroke. And so we’ve just been doing yeah, 56% of the swim sessions is just kick. Some of it’s just longer kick. But we’re also doing a lot of 50’s time just going fast.

Brenton: And in the space of six weeks, these kids dropped down both of them a bit over two seconds in there 50 freestyle and now their 0.04 and 0.1 off their national times. And majority of that I’d say it’s down to their kick. That’s one of the main things we’ve worked on. So, it is really important even though you don’t need it necessarily as a triathlete.

Taren Gesell: That sounds like an awful swim set. 60% of the swims being kick.

Brenton: Well, I used to catch a master squad and whenever I’d put kick up on the board there’s just like, there was a roll of the eyes and people would just switch off. So you’ve got to pick your audience and, but these kids are motivated and they want to get their national time. So as long as I tied into, “This is going to help you.” Then they’ll do it. So it can be a bit hard if you do it with that.

Taren Gesell: Try that with triathletes.

Brenton: Yeah, exactly.

Taren Gesell: I love triathletes like bouncing off the bulkhead going backwards.

Brenton: Oh, it’s like, yeah, that’s right. And Jay can get away with it. He’s got the credentials and everything too. So, yeah, do this kick and it will help. But yeah, try doing that at most squads you’ll have a hard time.

Taren Gesell: Yeah, exactly.

Brenton: And now one of the other things that we looked at was … Well, we talked about is letting go, letting it go just being a bit a bit more assertive in the stroke and not trying to be overly controlled with it. And so how are you going with that, first of all, and, how do you interpret that? I guess that kind of offhanded phrase of just let it go a bit and how do you interpret that and put that into your stroke?

Taren Gesell: That’s actually a really interesting thing because as you said it, I started thinking, okay, well yeah, I think I could be a little bit less mechanical. And by nature I’m really analytical and I want to get each aspect of it right. But then I started looking, actually, interestingly enough at some run footage of me and I went, in that I’m really stiff too. There my upper body is really stiff and I’m trying to hold my arms in a certain position. And I think that that’s kind of just the nature of me as an athlete that I’ve never been a really natural athlete. My brother is a guy that you could give him a ball and be like, all right, so what we’re gonna do is we’re going to throw this ball into that hoop and you’ll score point and he’ll be like, “What’s this called again?”

Taren Gesell: Like basketball, don’t worry about it. And then he’ll go score like 60 points and he could do that right-handed, left-handed. He once won at our yard game Olympics with a broken collarbone playing left-handed. And he’s just that natural athlete that doesn’t have to work at anything. I’ve had to always work at everything and as you mentioned that I should just let it go. I start thinking about just kind of that nature of how I’ve always approached sports that I’ve always looked at it as like, all right, if I can figure out the mechanics of this, I can be successful at it. But I’m at the point now, like you say in my stroke that it’s holding me back because I’m not having that momentum from the arm of just letting it fly. I’m not rotating enough, I’m too stiff. It’s like I’m forcing it and it’s forcing me to think about it in other aspects of the sport and that’ll hopefully make it easier for me to run faster and open up the stride and kind of let it rip and open.

Taren Gesell: It’s just different for me because it’s always been a really stiff approach that I’ve taken to all sports. So, am I going to get there? I really hope so. It’s just a complete paradigm shift for me beyond just that swim.

Brenton: Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? And one of the best pieces of advice I got, I can’t remember who it was from, but it’s the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And that was more in relation to, if you apply yourself in sport, then usually that will transfer over to your work and to family and everything. So you don’t, you normally see that there’s a lot of similarities in how people approach things and, but I guess it applies as well to maybe that rigidity and stiffness in swimming if that transfers across to the running. And it is certainly one of the harder things to develop in swimming. It’s really the art instead of the science of it. And, yeah, I’m really curious just to see a video of you in the next couple of months’ time to see how you go with just being that little bit looser with it and a bit more assertive in the stroke and just, and getting into that flow.

Brenton: And there’s no reason why you can’t do it with the amount of practice you put into it. And, yeah, it’s just, are you more sort of an engineer type where you just think things through and analyze everything? Or are you more of the airy fairy sort of artsy type?

Taren Gesell: Very much more the engineer type. My mom has a story of when each of us, there are three of us gazelle kits and each of us in the little aquarium that she calls it, that you get wrapped up in the bundle after you’re born and then you get put in this little aquarium. She says that each of us were in those first few hours as humans, the way that we turned out in life. So my brother, the airy fairy guy, he was smiling and looking at all the nurses and making them laugh and that’s what he’s like in life. My sister was screaming bloody murder and I was trying to figure out the world. I was sitting there like, all right okay, I got to figure out what daycare I’m going to go to. I got to think about the pros and cons of this. Yeah, I mean, what am I going to do? Am I going to be a soother person or am I going to be a blanket person? I don’t know.

Taren Gesell: So she says right from day one I was tremendously analytical and that’s how I’ve kind of taken to everything. I’ve always thought that there is not something that I could not figure out. If I was on a desert island and somebody needed heart surgery, I would try my damnedest to figure it out.

Brenton: Oh, that’s so funny. And Yeah, and I think you’ve used that to your advantage, the analytical side of things where yeah, you’ve dug really deep into all of Gerry staff and you’ve worked with Lucy and seen what she does and pulled all of these really good resources and information together and you’ve sort of figured that out and put it into your stroke, which is really good too to see. So, yeah, it’s almost going against what feels natural. And when I’m running clinics, one of the funny things that I often say is we do a filming at the start and then we do analysis and then we do the drills section and we’re working on making a couple of key changes with people. And then we do a final filming at the end. And in the final filming, people are so wrapped up in their head with, “All right, I’ve got to get this right and this right and this right.” And for that last swimming, what was happening for a while there was because I think of so many things now just they were sort of almost not even in their body. They’re just so much up in their head that that’d be focusing on three or four things and none of it would happen.

Brenton: And so what I’ve gotten to do now is just, I say to them, “All right, pick one thing that’s all I want you to worry about.” And then I kind of make a joke with them that you’re going to … Most people are just, so I’m overthinking things that they end up just very mechanical and controlled. So what I want you to do here is just find that natural rhythm and flow as best as you can and just pick one thing to think about. And that has made a world of difference to how that final filming looks at the end because they’re just, they’re much more relaxed. And especially with swimming you’ve got to be relaxed. You’ve got to be not overthinking things to really just get the feel for it. So it’s a very hard one to do, isn’t it? Because as soon as you don’t think about something, then it’s very easy to go back to what your natural habit is. But yeah, it’s finding that balance between the two.

Taren Gesell: Well, I really liked how last year when we started off you, you gave me, I think it was four or five things that you pointed out, but in the end you said, “All right, here’s the first thing I want you to work on. Work on it at the start of a workout, maybe during your warm-up and then just get into the swim.” And I think that’s why it felt like I wasn’t really making that much progress because hey I’m doing a little bit of work on I think it was like, it was my catch that you had me working on the positioning of the catch and the length of the pull through. And I worked on it a little bit in the warm up and then I’d just get on with all my swims over the last bunch of months. And it allowed me to, I think swim without focusing on nine different things. And I relate it to back when I was golfing, if you had to think nine different things with every swing, every ball would be in the bunker or the bushes and swimming’s not that much different.

Taren Gesell: You don’t end up in the bushes, but you can certainly have an awful stroke if you’re thinking about too many things. And I love that you just simplified it down to pick one thing, work on it a little bit at the start of the workout and then just get on with your workout. I love that.

Brenton: And part of the reason that I take that approach now is, when I’m working on my own strike, if I ever do a filming, I know all of the ways to change anything that I need to in my strike. But even then, if I’ve got two things to think about, I’ll usually do none of them because it’s too much for me. So I think, all right, if this is my bread and butter, if I’m thinking about swimming six to eight hours a day because I’m coaching, I might be in the pool and if I can’t, if I could still get confused or if I still forget and I still got you back to those things that I don’t want to try and avoid, then what chances someone who might be in the water for three hours a week and that’s all they’re thinking about, that, that’s three hours of swimming that to think about a week instead of what might be 30.

Brenton: So it’s more of a realistic approach and it’s an easy approach. And, as you know, things don’t happen overnight do they? It’s just, it’s a really gradual progression and it’s incremental and you’ve got to look at it at least 12 months, 18 months in the future, and have that sort of long-term approach. Because if you’re wanting to get down from a 2:15 till 1:45 in the space of six weeks or even six months for that matter, then your time frame’s too short and you’re just going to get frustrated. Was there some, what sort of feelings were you having going through these changes and working on things? Was there some frustration there?

Taren Gesell: Not really at all. It didn’t feel like I was really changing much. I don’t know. I just kind of felt like I was going through the process and trusting that the workouts from Tower 26 combined with doing your drills during the warm-ups, that it would end up resulting in good things. And I very much take the approach that I can’t look at it week by week. I have to look like at most quarter by quarter. It’s like looking at your investment portfolio. If you look at it every single day or every single week, you’re going to freak out and not really think that you’re making much gains. But if you look at just consistent work or patients, whether it’s stocks or swimming, if you’re doing the right things, it’s going to be an upward trajectory. But when you’re in the weeds looking at it on a week by week basis, it might not seem that way. So I really didn’t look at it from the standpoint of am I making progress until, I probably went from August until when you and I did the swim analysis to really see if there was progress.

Taren Gesell: And it wasn’t until probably end of February before I started doing some timed efforts to see if it really manifested in actual faster swimming. So yeah, not a a lot of frustration. It was just kind of like trust that it was going to work out. I had some good people helping me between you and Gerry

Brenton: And I remember you posting a video, you’re just sort of looking at those the data from your watch I believe, and just tracking the overall 100 meter pace over the course of a couple of months. And it was quite an interesting graph. It had some ups, it had some downs, but their overall trajectory was downwards in terms of getting faster. Can you talk a little bit about that data, if you remember that video?

Taren Gesell: Yeah. So what happened there was I got the Garmin 9:35 on, I want to say it was April of last year, 2018 and for some reason people who follow me on Instagram really like seeing how far I swim and how fast I swim. So I’m not a big believer in always swimming with a watch. But I did it just so that I could get the good Instagram photo. And I started tracking my distance swam and the average time per 100 meters or yards depending on what pool I was swimming in. And what happened is from April until my key race, half IRONMAN worlds in South Africa, I saw a slow progression of getting faster and faster as we started, including more and more speed work. And I got a little bit better. And then from that time until middle of January, my time is actually about slower because we’re working on so much technique during the off season with the kicking and tightness in the body and alignment.

Taren Gesell: The time actually went up and I wasn’t tracking this as I was doing it. I was just hit save on my watch and whatever happened and then when I started looking at it for that video, it would have been middle of February, I want to say or end of February, probably middle of February. And we had started doing more speed work and what happened is as soon as we started doing speed work, the times plummeted. So it was like I had built the foundation of swimming and better technique, but I had to get slower before I got faster and now that I am faster, my ceiling of my potential is that much higher than it was last year because within about four weeks of adding in some speed, my times are already faster than the fastest average times that I was putting out last year. So it was really neat to actually start analyzing that and seeing how a season unfold.

Brenton: Yeah, it is really interesting. And it also, I think it terms of the mindset with swimming, when you start to do that, you level up and once you bring that time down another couple of second, what you believe is possible changes as well. And that helps a lot with then getting faster in the next six months, in 12 months. What mentally for you, how has it been, in terms of your belief of what you can do with your swimming? How’s it changed?

Taren Gesell: Well I just did half Ironman Puerto Rico this past weekend and I still don’t think that I’m a front pack swimmer. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a front pack swimmer because that’s often filled with X swimmers and people that are swimming 25, 26 minutes per 1900 meters and a half Ironman. But I got up to the start line and it wasn’t even a question this weekend of am I going to line up right at the front? And sure, I’ll let the front pack swim away from me and I know that I’m not going to get on their feet, but there was no question in my mind of should I be in the second pack or not? Am I capable swimmer enough to, regardless of whether it’s a wetsuit or a non-wetsuit or there’s chop, can I have a successful swim? And this was the fastest by far non wetsuit swim that I’ve ever done and it’s actually faster than some of the previous wetsuits swims that I’ve ever done. So it’s like the swim is not even a factor in most races. I kind of just look at it as a warm-up now.

Brenton: Yeah, it’s so good, we were talking before the call about one of the guys that I do some video for and who’s a part of your team training, he’s banned and this was his first half Ironman race and hade never swim that distance nonstop in the open water. And it was, yeah, it was something that in the back of his mind, he was like, “oh, I don’t know. Hopefully I can make it there continuously. I might need to stop every now and then to get my breath back.” But coming from no swimming background, being afraid of the water, he got through that swim and now he’s tick that one off and it’s just going to add a feather to his cap in terms of confidence in himself and belief in what he can do. It’s just … Did you see him after the race? Did you get to chat to him afterwards?

Taren Gesell: Yeah, we actually went for dinner. I saw him during the race and it was kind of funny when I saw him when were passing each other on the run. My instinct was to go up and hug him. And normally I don’t really even give people thumbs up when they say like, good job Taren. But just to see that Ben actually existed on the run because that meant that he got through the swim. He was so happy and when we went for dinner the next day or the day after, he was thrilled with the fact that he got through that swim and really excited for I think what the next race is going to be.

Brenton: Yeah. It’s so good to see, and as a coach and I’ve coached people from who are quite brand new to swimming to those that are at the very sort of top of their game and everyone’s at different stages in their triathlon or there swimming career and everyone’s got different goals. And once you really get to know people and you get to know what their background is and what their stories and why they’re doing these crazy triathlons or crazy swims and you actually get to see them overcome these fears and achieve these things that they’ve set out to do 12 months in the future. It’s just, yeah, that’s what’s really enjoyable from a coaching perspective, but also just in seeing friends and other people do those things. That’s what I really get a kick out of. And I’m sure you probably see a lot yourself with the amount of people that you’re in contact with through all the stuff that you do.

Taren Gesell: Well, I’m so much more motivated by the people that are working really hard to finish a race and have the confidence to finish a race or starting multiple half Ironmans not making the cutoff time and the next race is the race that they want to actually finish under the cutoff time and that’s their goal. Then I am motivated by like, I’m sorry Lucy, but you’re a fast person trying to be faster or in my case like I wanted to do a 137 half marathon at the end of the half Ironman and I did a 142, like, ah, boo hoo. I think the life changing goals that people set to change who they are as a person, that gets me way more jazzed up than the goals of improving your swim or improving your bike marginally or improving your run marginally. I really like those stories of Ben going from like, as you know when he came and saw me and we did a training camp in September, he couldn’t swim the length of the pool and now he’s a half Ironman now because of the work that you did with him.

Brenton: That’s awesome to say. Yeah. And there’s a friend of mine, I’ve known her for a couple of years. She is doing open water swimming and one of the things that she wanted to do over the summer holidays was swim half of the bay in Melbourne. So Melbourne’s got to Port Phillip Bay and she wanted to do 10 kilometers for 10 days where she’d start at the entrance of the bay and then she would swim around the coast there and make her way up to basically Melbourne city. And I’m looking at this guy, oh my God. I don’t know if I need to put in some serious training and, I don’t know how old she is, but she’s probably Oh shit twice my age. Right. So, and she did this over the summer holidays and got through it. Didn’t complain. Just, yeah, every morning got up and swam the 10k, she had a husband in the Kayak next to her with the feeds and helping with direction and everything.

Brenton: And it’s just incredible to saying 99% of people couldn’t do that, but she just sort of set a set in mind on it. Just did it, it wasn’t an organized event. They just kind of mapped out where they wanted to go and, went down there and did it. And I just look at that and think, man, that’s awesome. That’s something that I would love to do. So it’s very inspiring and it makes me think about what things would get me get me off the couch and and get me out of out of bed in the morning to train and sort of achieve or challenge me I think. So it’s stuff like that that really fires me up, so It’s really cool to see.

Taren Gesell: Yeah, I like the concept of that. The [inaudible 00:43:20] who I mentioned before, that was a really, really talented ITU athlete. He was one of the people that did the 37 kilometer open water swim with us and he was actually our nutrition guy for the first 27 kilometer open water swim that I did. And when we were doing the 37 kilometer open water swim, because it was in a pretty dirty body of water, a lot of people really didn’t like that we were doing it. And his response was always, “Why can’t, you guys just have a sense of adventure.” And people would ask, “Why are you doing this?” “Can three buddies just going on an adventure and try to do something cool that they don’t know that they can do?” And that was his attitude. Like even though he is trying to get to the Olympics as a kid, he’s still trying to find those adventures of feeling that sense of not sure if he can do it or not.

Brenton: Yeah. And that’s what’s really fun. Yeah. I like looking at the map and guide, I’d love to run from here to here. I’d like to bike from here to here or swim from a certain point. And it’s that a … I don’t know, it’s like just that call to adventure. It’s what I think we all, we all really like liked to do as kids and then when we become these grown up in serious adults, we just kind of lose that sense of play and adventure. And yeah, once you get that back, that’s what, I don’t know, that’s what I find most enjoyable. I bought a mountain bike the other week because we’ve got these really good trials around my place, but I’ve just never got the chance to ride them. So I went to a LD, I don’t know if you’ve got LD where you live, but it’s kind of like a supermarket, like a discount supermarket and every week they have these deals and it’s just random things. I might be tense one week it might be cooking stuff another week, last week they had a mountain bike, which was $90 I couldn’t find one secondhand for $90.

Brenton: so I bought a [inaudible 00:45:25] mountain bike, put it together. And for the last couple of days I’ve just been riding around these trials and just kind of going off, not just tracking where I’m going, just exploring and just finding some trials around the place. And it’s been so much fun just getting out there and set off for an hour and a half or two hours and just sort of see where I end up. And yeah, just getting back to that sort of sense of play is really enjoyable. Now, the bike did fall apart two days ago where I had to stop in at my in-laws place and the wheel had almost come off and the handlebars had almost come off. But luckily I I was a K away from my in-laws place and I could get it tightened, but I will eventually upgrade to a better bike, but I just wanted to say if I was going to use it or not. but that was all part of the adventure as well.

Taren Gesell: Sounds like when my wife, Kim and I, we go to Kona often when we travel to anywhere, instead of renting a car, we’ll go and buy some bikes from Target or Walmart or something like that and bike around. And there was one year that we both bought these cheap bikes and Walmart wouldn’t let me actually put it together, so they had to put it together. They wheel it out and they’re like, “Here you are sir, here’s your bike.” And I’m like, “Okay, must be safe.” He probably does this all day. And we ended up going down the hill and I’m going like 40 kilometers an hour and the handlebars fall off. And I’m like, “What the … ?” So I took it back and as we were trying to take it back, the chain on my wife’s bike fell off. I’m like, “All right, give me the tools. I’m going to need these.”

Brenton: Yeah, I think I should have not trusted LD in putting it together. I should have tightened things up a little bit first. But I-

Taren Gesell: I don’t think they’re certified bike mechanics.

Brenton: No, not at all. It’s all part of the fun. So what’s next for you? What have you got coming up in the next couple of months in terms of races? What things have you got in terms of your YouTube channel and other things happening?

Taren Gesell: We’ve got Challenge Roth is the next big race and I might throw another half Ironman in between there. I’m not totally sure, but this is going to be my first full distance race that I’m doing at Challenge Roth and that’s middle of July and interesting project that I’m doing with that is yeah, a guy named Dan Plews who might be actually more familiar with a lot of people from down under. He’s in New Zealand right now. He Won Kona in 2018 he won the amateur race and set the all-time amateur course record in 8 24 and ran something like a to 50, like the fifth fastest run of the day as an amateur. And he’s a sports scientist and the coach of Terenzo Bozzone and he does all of this with a low carb diet and he does the research on it and publishes, I think he’s been published in a couple of dozen papers and he’s actually going to be working with me just as like a fun project to document on YouTube to see how I can or can’t adapt to low carb, high fat training.

Taren Gesell: So we’re doing like fat oxidation testing and I’ve got an adaptation period of three weeks coming up where I’m doing full keto and still training for it and then backing off and re-adding in some of the carbs. So that project is going to be really, really fun. I’m looking forward to that a lot. And the couple of things that you mentioned, we launched team [inaudible 00:49:01] .com at the beginning of the year and just this is like groundbreaking news. This is like the official worldwide announcement just now launched protriathlontraining.com. So that’s where we’ve got the courses that we’ve put together with Lucy talking about how to swim, cam worth, talking about how to bike [inaudible 00:49:25] with how to run Merinda Carfrae, Tim O’donnell and their strength coach Aaron Carson with how to strength train for triathlons.

Taren Gesell: So it’s kind of a neat period where last year at this time all we had was a bunch of YouTube videos and I was thinking, I had my engineer mind like, how in the hell do I make a living off of this? And now we’ve got actual products and things that we are offering and things that we can say like, oh, here’s a program that we’ve put together and think is really cool. And hopefully people think the same thing.

Brenton: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Congratulations on putting everything together, and it takes time doesn’t it? I mean four years ago you started and now it seems like it’s on that trajectory where it’s just, you’re really getting that exponential growth and you deserve it. I mean, the amount of content that you put out there and I know you’ve got a bit of how with that, but it’s still just a video day. Is amazing. I’m lucky if I do one a week. So I think I could maybe I can put it out of course on that. I’ll definitely do that.

Taren Gesell: How to put out more videos?

Brenton: Yeah.

Taren Gesell: Just set your expectations way low.

Brenton: Yeah.

Taren Gesell: That’s all. Don’t worry about them being good. Just talk.

Brenton: If I spend less time in my hair in the morning, I’ll be able to have more time during the day to do it. [crosstalk 00:50:58] I’ll just … Well thanks for joining me on the podcast Taren.

Taren Gesell: Thanks for having me.

Brenton: Been really good chatting with you. And, yeah, you had me on your podcast the other week, which I really enjoyed. And yeah, looking forward to working with you in the future and doing some more follow up videos and then six years down the track when you’re in the front of the pack and you’ve got people on your feet that’d be a good story to tell.

Taren Gesell: Oh yeah. And I’m already planning out my, my finish line. Thank you to Gerry Rodrigues and Brent from Effortless Swimming and now I’m going to Disney world. Like, yeah, you’ll get a mentioned in my winners acceptance speech.

Brenton: Thanks [crosstalk 00:51:40] Thanks so much.

Taren Gesell: Thanks so much for your-

Brenton: [crosstalk 00:51:43].

Taren Gesell: Over the last, last year. You are a big part and the entire stroke wasn’t just Gerry or you, it was a real big team effort. And both of you together. It was great to go through last year, so thanks a lot.

The post Why It Pays Off To Follow The Process With Taren Gesell appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Jason Key is an age group triathlete based out of Texas. Jason joined our membership last year and has since gone from 1:50/100m pace in his triathlon swims to an incredible 1:30/100m pace.

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00:56 How Jason started with Effortless Swimming.

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The post From 1:50/100m to 1:30/100m Pace with Jason Key appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

We welcome back Solomon Wright who recently won the New Zealand 10km Open Water Championship. In this episode, Solomon talks about his training leading up to the National Championship and how he recovered from shoulder injury. We also added a before and after video of Solomon comparing his stroke now and 12 months ago.

02:53 Solomon’s focus after Rottnest Channel

Transcription:

Intro: Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here is your host, Brenton Ford.

Brenton Ford: Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. This is episode #128 with my guest Solomon Wright, who most recently became the New Zealand 10 kilometer open water champion. Solomon was on the podcast last year after he won the Rottnest Channel, and in the last 12 months he has put a lot of work into his strength, into his stroke, and also his fitness.

Brenton Ford: We’ll talk more about that on the podcast, but there’s also a YouTube video that accompanies this podcast where we do a before and after of Solomon’s technique because, after the Rottnest Channel swim where he was having issues with his shoulders but he managed to come out and win that event in record time, but those injuries were still quite fresh to him. We have a look at what are some of the things in his stroke that he was doing that he wanted to change, and we also have the after video that was recorded just a couple of weeks ago. You’ll really see a significant difference in his catch, his alignment, his recovery, and a few other aspects of the stroke. Head on over to the YouTube channel, which is the Effortless Swimming YouTube channel, take a look at that accompanying video.

Brenton Ford: It’s quite interesting to see the progression and the development at that very top level. It’s obviously a lot less or a lot more minimal changes that we see with swimmers who don’t have that same level of experience behind them, but there’s still some significant changes that you do see there. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at, there’s always things that you can work on. Take a look at the video on YouTube.

Brenton Ford: Let’s get into the podcast. This is Solomon Wright talking about what he’s changed, what he’s focused on in the last 12 months to get to such a good place in terms of much less injury, he’s a lot fitter than where he was, and what’s next for him. Let’s get into it.

Brenton Ford: Solomon, welcome to the podcast. This is the second time I’ve had you on. The most recent thing you’ve done is you’ve just won the New Zealand 10K open water champ. Congratulations and welcome.

Solomon Wright: Thank you so much. It’s really good to be back. I’m happy to chat with you. Thanks again for the weekend. I’m really, really excited and really happy with the result, and looking forward to the next year.

Brenton Ford: We caught up after [Roddo 00:02:12]. We both completed at Roddo and you won in a new record time. Then, a couple weeks later, I came up to the Gold Coast and we did some filming because I thought it would be really good to see what your stroke looks like and see what we can take from that and teach to the swimmers that come along to our clinics and online. Then, again more recently, just a couple weeks ago, we did another sort of filming together up on the Gold Coast. There’s been quite a bit of stuff that you’ve been working on since the very first filming that we did, just post-Roddo. You were saying that your times had come down as a result of that and fitness and less injury and everything.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: I thought it’d be interesting to just talk about what are some of those things that you had focused on over the last 12 months, just in terms of the technical stuff of your stroke?

Solomon Wright: Well, after Roddo last year, my shoulders were quite injured. I was dealing with a bit of injury going into Rottnest and then again coming out of it. That was my main focus. I’ve been working on my stroke from after the first time with you and looking at how my shoulder flexibility and my mobility and the strength of all of that rotation stuff, going through my stroke. I really analyzed that and then took that to my physio and to my coaches and really set out a plan to just get stronger so I could become faster in the water. That’s really worked over the last year.

Solomon Wright: I’ve had a rocky year with my shoulders, up and down, as injuries tend to do, but the last six months has been solid. I’ve been slowly building that strength that I need and my times have come down accordingly, so pretty happy with the last year.

Brenton Ford: What are some of those specific exercises and areas that you’ve been focusing on?

Solomon Wright: Well, my catch has been … Was quite low off the first video. I’m sure you remember. It was quite low because I just didn’t have that strength or the flexibility to reach a little bit higher and grab more pulling through my strokes. I’ve worked on getting that higher, and then I’ve worked just through the basic physio exercises, the basic rotator cuff stuff and just basic gym rowing exercises to get that strength through my whole back and all around to support my shoulder in that pull through, so I’m pulling more water with more ease.

Brenton Ford: It’s … I’m going to do a YouTube video on this, comparing … Well, looking at the differences and the changes over the last 12 months because there’s some sort of … It looks like there’s been some flow and effects from that extra strength and working that part of your catch, as well. It looked like it made a big difference with your alignment and your recovery and a bit to do with the rotation, as well. When all of that comes together, it seems like the other aspects that you may not necessarily be focusing on, they tend to improve as a result of that, too.

Solomon Wright: Yeah, absolutely.

Brenton Ford: It’s really quite evident. Yeah, winning the New Zealand 10K champs the other week is a really good result. You mentioned just before the call that that’s … Unlike the pool nationals, it’s not you win and you’re on the team. It’s a selection process.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: Can you talk a little bit about what’s the process now from here to go on and swim at a world cup or international competitions?

Solomon Wright: I think from … I’m unsure, obviously. It’s all subject to selectors’ discretion, really. They have to decide based on funding and lots of other influencing factors who they send where and whether or not I will be allowed to go, but I think I will be allowed to go to a world cup next year and go back on the international circuit for some international race practice, really, and jump back on that circuit, which I’ll be really, really happy to do because that’s what I did back before my shoulder injury. I was at that level, so I’m really pleased to be back at that level.

Solomon Wright: Then, I’m racing again next week at Australian championships for the second part of my selection onto world championships. Hopefully I do well next weekend, and then hopefully I’ll be off to world championships, but who knows? It’s all up to selectors. I’ll just do my best and see how that goes.

Brenton Ford: When it comes to some of the training sessions that you’ve been doing, you sent through … You wrote down some of the workouts that you’ve done. Half of some of the main sets is a full session for most people so there’s some pretty massive sets that you’ve done. I think it would be good to talk through a couple of maybe the harder ones that you’ve done over the last couple of months because, when I read them, I thought, “Jesus Christ.” Next time I’m training for Rottnest or a really big swim, I’ve really got to up my game and up the distance that I’m doing in some of these sets because they’re pretty impressive. What were the one, two, or three workouts that you found were probably the most challenging?

Solomon Wright: Well, actually, speaking of the hard workouts, over Christmas I went home to see my family back in Perth and spend time with my old coach back there, training there, keeping my fitness up. They did an open water camp and we were doing huge amount of Ks. We did, over the Christmas period, including Christmas Day and New Year’s and stuff, I think over the three weeks we did 210, 215 Ks, somewhere around that ranging. It’s 70-80K weeks and it just absolutely smashes you. You can break it up however you like, really, but just getting those Ks under your belt is just so essential for that later fitness, those long swims. I’m not doing 200 meters, I’m doing 10K. 10K a day shouldn’t really be too much of an issue.

Brenton Ford: How many sessions were you breaking that across? 80K a week, what would that typically look like? How many sessions and how long would you be training for?

Solomon Wright: Well, that varied because it was the holiday season and the pool opening and closing and that sort of stuff. Before the actual holiday season started, in early December I was doing the standard sort of morning and night sessions, so I was doing nine times a week. That was about it, really, just squeeze all the Ks into nine sessions. I wasn’t doing any gym because, again, my shoulders don’t … They’re not going to cope with all of those Ks and a gym, as well, so I was just doing recovery and swimming and that was about it.

Solomon Wright: Then, during the holiday season, we decided to do longer mornings, some afternoons, but mostly mornings. It was just two-and-a-half, three hour mornings.

Brenton Ford: Full on. Are there … Is it … What sort of pace are you swimming for most of those Ks? Is it kind of just below threshold or is it above that? Is there much speed work? What would it typically look like?

Solomon Wright: Well, it’s sort of a building process. You don’t start off going flat out for 13Ks for a three hour session on your very first day. That comes later. You’re just sort of building slowly so sitting at short rest pace was sort of common. We just sort of kick over. There’s not really much resting. You don’t really do much resting. Maybe in a three hour session you’d, I don’t know, sit on the wall for maybe 10 minutes of that three hours in total. In a two hour session, you might sit for five minutes. Sometimes you don’t sit at all, sometimes you just do … A session will be 10K straight.

Solomon Wright: You’ve got to treat it like a race and build up. You build your race, you do it fast at the start, fast at the finish. Whatever you decide to do, you treat it like however you want to race or whatever your race strategy will be for whatever distance you’re doing. It’s good to get in and do that distance straight away so, if you’re doing a 2K swim in the ocean and that’s your first swim, it’s good to just get in the pool and do a 2K like you would in the ocean so you can get that sort of experience under your belt, although it’s different conditions, it’s different scenarios. If you can do that in the pool, then it’s clear that you can do it in the ocean if all things go well. If things don’t go well, well, then adapt and just do your best, really.

Brenton Ford: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I’m looking at some of the sets here. This one made me laugh. You’ve got a … I assume this probably isn’t the … There’s warm-up before this, as well, but the main set, it’s … You’ve got 10 100s on 1:15. Then, 30 seconds rest. Then, 8K build and then 1K max. That’s just [inaudible 00:10:19]. That’s your 10K set.

Solomon Wright: No, there’s no warm-up before that. That’s a 10K race practice.

Brenton Ford: Straight into it.

Solomon Wright: Yeah, because in a race, at the start, you’re sort of … There’s no preamble before a race. You sort of … You got your race briefing. That takes 30 minutes. You’re not really warmed up. You’ve got to … You swing your arms and that’s about the best you get. Straight into it and then straight into a building process and then flash finish.

Brenton Ford: All right. That’s … Yeah, that’s impressive. The other one I liked, as well, was … I tried this. I nearly made it one set through, short course.

Solomon Wright: Right.

Brenton Ford: It was the 100 on 1:30, 200 on 2:30, 300 on three minutes 30, and then 400 on four minutes 30.

Solomon Wright: [crosstalk 00:10:57].

Brenton Ford: It’s got “times four” next to it.

Solomon Wright: Yeah. Yeah, it’s tough.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. That is …

Solomon Wright: It’s so fun.

Brenton Ford: Oh, man. That was fast.

Solomon Wright: Yeah. It’s sort of like 100 easy, and then it’s 200 of sort of tempo, 300 of fast, and then 400 at your race pace. Then, repeat.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. That’s … I really like that set. It’s just … It’s kind of unrelenting. It just gets harder and harder and harder. Then, I guess you go back down, get a little bit more rest.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: It really sort of crescendos at the end there. [crosstalk 00:11:29]. I like that set.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: Yeah, it’s … There’s just some really challenging work out sets. I like seeing what guys at the very top end like yourself are doing because it kind of makes you think, “All right, there’s more that I can do here.”

Solomon Wright: Yeah, absolutely.

Brenton Ford: I don’t know if you’ve heard of a guy, Dave Goggins. He’s written this book recently. He used to be an ex-Navy SEAL and now he does a lot of ultra marathon running.

Solomon Wright: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Brenton Ford: He’s just a really hard guy. He talks about … He did this 100K race and it was the first one that he did. He hadn’t trained for it, really, at all and he ended up just completely ruining himself. He was throwing up blood and everything. There was sort of no filter with the pain. He’d just go through it and he just wouldn’t think twice about it.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: It’s kind of … After hearing stuff like that, it’s good motivation to just … You can do it. It’s really … It’s so mental compered to physical. Obviously, the physical is important, but a lot of it is upstairs, what’s happening in your mind.

Solomon Wright: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I agree.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. Is it … Did you … Do you ever find that, when you’re training, that it’s just a matter of just getting to the pool and getting it done and not overthinking, yeah, if you’re feeling tired and you’re …

Solomon Wright: Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes it’s just easy to go to training and just do what you’re told. Sometimes that’s all you can do, and that’s an achievement. Getting up at quarter to 5:00 or half past 4:00 or whenever you’re getting up and then just going and doing what you’re told and getting through the sets, sometimes that’s it. Sometimes you can really push it because you’re feeling great and you’ve had a double shot coffee or whatever before training and you’re really ready to go so you push it extra hard and you get fitter and stuff, but sometimes just turning up is better than not turning up at all.

Brenton Ford: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I remember going through that. Even last year, training for Roddo, there’s sessions where you feel great and there’s sessions where you feel like you’ve just made no gain because your shoulders are sore and can’t get going.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: Then, yeah, it all comes back around. It’s just … You’ve got to push through that and you’ve still got to keep training. It’s the …

Solomon Wright: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:13:33].

Brenton Ford: Yeah, it’s the key to making it work.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: In terms of race strategy for the New Zealand swim, how did it play out for you. Was it what you expected or is there anything that needed to change midway through?

Solomon Wright: Not really. I sort of was … I was sort of ready to adapt because I’ve done that huge block over Christmas. I was pretty aerobically fit at the moment and whether or not it’s … The main limiting factor was whether or not I was strong enough and whether or not I had the speed. Those were the two limiting factors. I knew I had the fitness so … Yeah, it was just … I was just looking at other people and seeing how they go. I think I was sitting in third position, just cruising and ticking my arms over, basically, for the first three laps, just making sure I was keeping in contact with everyone and making sure we weren’t going too slow, or bridging the gap if someone decided to go, which happened once or twice, just making sure I was there and just going around the course.

Solomon Wright: New Zealand was quite … It was quite a cold course. It was 20 degrees, which is warm enough to not wear a wetsuit but cold enough to feel the cold. I was just trying to keep my shoulders mobile. Then, with a lap to go, I moved up into first and started pushing the pace a bit. One other boy went with me and then … Again, I wasn’t really aerobically challenged, I was just starting to get a bit sore. Then, I just decided with a kilometer to go that just, “All right, well, let’s try and win this. I’m sitting in first now, I may as well just push it and make sure it’s not a sprint finish,” because, as I said, I know I’m fit, it’s just whether or not I have the speed, and I wasn’t prepared to leave it to a last 100 meter finish or last 200 meter sprint finish with whoever because, in those scenarios, it’s really just who is the freshest.

Solomon Wright: I wasn’t prepared to do that so I took off with a kilometer to go. I just put 30 seconds on the guy who came second and that was it. That was it. That was my race, really. It was really very basic. I was just really responsive and aware of my own energy levels and aware of my own strength and I really just backed myself to have the fitness to be able to stay with everybody and not have to push the pace and just have enough strength and enough speed just to take off. Then, hold them off towards the line. That was sort of it. That was my race strategy.

Brenton Ford: It sounds like you had a lot of confidence going into it, especially having such a good build-up to the race. Your shoulders had been a lot better than what they were 12 months ago. Is that the feeling that you took into it?

Solomon Wright: Not really. Well, yes and no. Yes because I, as you said, I did that huge block of training, but no because I’ve … That was my first big 10K open water swim on these shoulders. I haven’t done any long, long 10Ks. Obviously, I’ve done them in training, but in race scenario with a big suit on, it’s obviously a little bit different. I was a little bit untested with my shoulders and I was wary of whether or not they would hold up. Given the cold, everything sort of freezes up and all your blood goes into your torso, and your shoulders and your arms and your toes, there’s no blood in those. I was really wary of that. I’ve learned to [inaudible 00:16:38]. I think [inaudible 00:16:40] my suit was a little bit too tight so I’m going to be wearing a looser suit for my upcoming races because I just don’t think the circulation was there.

Solomon Wright: Yeah, I was really confident in my abilities in the last 5K, it was just getting to that 5K. As I said, I was feeling really fit but I wasn’t feeling very fast and I didn’t really have that speed because I’d just come off a huge block of training. All I did was get to 5K and then I backed myself from there.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. That’s interesting. It’s really … It’s race confidence, isn’t it? Just being … Having the recent races like … Every year in January, I normally race this three day meet here … Not here, around Melbourne. Day one, I’m normally … There’s … I’ve got cobwebs that I need to shake off and swim okay. Then, day two, starting to get better.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: Then, by day three, it’s like I’ve figured out how to race again, or I’ve remembered how to race. It’s just … Just needed to do more of that than … Yeah, as long as you got the fitness there.

Solomon Wright: Yeah, absolutely.

Brenton Ford: It’s good that you had that as a training run before next week, which is Australian champs.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: You’re saying that it’s quite a deep field this year.

Solomon Wright: Yeah, it is. It is. It’s huge. Anyone might be a 15. [inaudible 00:17:53] if you get in the top four for that selection position, so it really could be anyone. It’s going to be anyone’s game.

Brenton Ford: Has it ever been this stacked or is it sort of something that’s caused so many swimmers to be focused on this year, or there’s just a lot more swimmer who are at that very top level here?

Solomon Wright: Well, yeah, that’s been the state of Australian open water swimming, really. It’s sort of been a few really, really good juniors, maybe three or four years ago, and that’s been sort of building. Now it’s sort of hitting the crescendo where there’s 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds who are ready and raring to go. It’s sort of … That’s just it. Open water is a growing sport. It only got added to the Olympics in 2008 so it’s had three or four Olympic cycles now. It’s just growing and it continues to grow. I think it’s the fastest growing sport in the world at the moment.

Brenton Ford: Yeah, that’s awesome. You definitely see it around what the open water swims over summer. There’s just so many swims and there’s so many people there, which is awesome.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: It’s just such a great sport, isn’t it? I love swimming in the ocean. I did my first open water race for the season last week and there’s 5,000 people who enter the [Peter Pub 00:19:05] and do this swim.

Solomon Wright: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Brenton Ford: It’s just … It’s not worth your time. It’ only 1.2K. It’s too short for you, but, yeah, it’s just such an awesome time.

Solomon Wright: Yeah.

Brenton Ford: It’s great to see that open water swimming has just had such a big increase in popularity over the last few years, and we’ve certainly seen it … I’ve probably seen it really start to come into a lot of clubs, as well. Normally, the clubs are mostly focused on the pool competitions only. Now there’s definitely a lot more movement towards some open water clubs or there’s different squads for those guys. You train with quite a few good open water swimmers up on the Gold Coast, don’t you?

Solomon Wright: Yeah. Yeah, I do.

Brenton Ford: So you’ve got … Yeah. There’s quite a few there. Then, what club do you train with over in Perth?

Solomon Wright: I train with Perth City.

Brenton Ford: They’ve got quite a … Their focus is mostly open water, as well?

Solomon Wright: Yeah, yeah. They’ve got an even bigger squad than here on the Gold Coast. Their squad is huge. It’s really good.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. No, that’s awesome.

Brenton Ford: Well, good luck for next week. You’re doing Rottnest again so …

Solomon Wright: Yeah, I am.

Brenton Ford: Back around. Is that … You’ll … Let’s say you make the New Zealand team. You’ll still do Rottnest?

Solomon Wright: I hope so. I hope so. If New Zealand turn around and say, “We’re sending you on a plane for this race at this date,” and it coincides with Roddo, then obviously I’ll have to put the international race first, but, other than that, I will be doing Roddo again, yeah.

Brenton Ford: Yeah. That’s exciting. Well, good luck for it. It’s been awesome to see you [inaudible 00:20:40] become New Zealand champion and the progression over the last 12 months now that your shoulder are good. Yeah.

Solomon Wright: Yeah, that’s nice.

Brenton Ford: It’s really exciting to see where you’re going. Good luck for it. I appreciate you coming back on the podcast.

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

The post The Road To NZ 10km National Championship with Solomon Wright appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

We’ve just returned from our annual Hell Week camps in Thailand. Here are nine things I learned from the camp that I thought it would be worth sharing on a podcast.

1. Clear your mind

2. Regular feedback

3. Go crazy

4. Find your ideal stroke rate

5. 3 different ways to think about your ‘Catch’

6. Patience

7. How a 3-minute active warm up can change your entire workout

8. Educate, try and test

9. Getting faster right away isn’t always an indicator of a correct change in your stroke

Next year we have two camps running from October 12-19 and October 20-27. Bookings are now open on our website for Hell Week swim camp. These camps usually book out in a few hours so I recommend reserving your spot as soon as possible.

Click here to book Hell Week 2019

Our Hell Week group just finished the 40x50s DC Special: 16×50 every 4th fast 12×50 every 3rd fast 8×50 every every 2nd fast 4×50 fast #hellweek #effortlessswimming #swimtraining

A post shared by Effortless Swimming (@effortlessswimming) on Oct 7, 2018 at 7:55pm PDT

? around the pool #hellweek

A post shared by Effortless Swimming (@effortlessswimming) on Oct 14, 2018 at 8:49pm PDT

Another epic bunch at Hell Week! Thanks for an amazing camp. Im grateful for being able to work with such an incredible group of people – swimmers and coaches alike. The last two weeks of camp have been extremely rewarding, I appreciate you all for choosing to come to Thailand to push yourself outside your comfort zone. With 17 of 40 swimmers returning for a second or third year, it means a lot to me – thank you ?‍?? We’re back next year from Oct 12-19 and 20-27. Bookings open late next week.

A post shared by Effortless Swimming (@effortlessswimming) on Oct 18, 2018 at 8:35pm PDT

Transcript:

Intro:                        Welcome to the Effortless swimming podcast. The show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Brenton Ford:                    Hi, Brenton Ford here, welcome to Episode number 125 of The Effortless Swimming Podcast. Today’s episode is called The Nine Things That We Learned On Hell Week Camp. Now, if you don’t know what Hell Week Camp is, it’s a week-long camp that we hold on the island of Phuket in Thailand at a resort called Thanyapura. We’ve been doing this camp for the last five years. It’s where we have around 20 athletes come and join myself and a few other coaches at the resort to work on their technique in their swimming.

Brenton Ford:                    There’s some challenging sets thrown in there. We do a lot of work on mobility and stretching, mindset and goal setting. It’s not all just about technique, but that’s certainly a heavy focus. We do a lot of underwater filming and analysis throughout the week because that’s why most people come there. You can try and hide anywhere in the world but when it comes to focused and intensive work on your stroke, and learning more about your swimming, this is really the place to be.

Brenton Ford:                    There’s nine things that I write down, that I took away from the camp that I thought would be worth sharing on this podcast, because it might help you in your own swimming. The first thing that I’ve got here is clearing the mind. One of our coaches, Mitchell Patterson, who was a Commonwealth record holder, he was an Australian representative. He was a coach on the camp. And he’s worked with us for quite a few years now. One of the things that he spoke to the group about was when it comes to racing, when you’re standing behind the block or you’re standing on the start line, you need to have a clear head, and you might want to keep one or two things in mind. But after that, shut yourself off from overthinking and analyzing things. The thinking should be done in training.

Brenton Ford:                    We talk a lot about this in terms of your technique. Think about your stroke, really concentrate on it when you’re training. But when it comes to racing, the hard work or the thinking is done. So, what you need to do is clear the mind and you may want to use one or two cues or mantras as you’re swimming to remember, but that is it. That allows you to get into flow and get into the state of being able to perform at your best, and all you need to worry about is the pacing and your racing strategy, as opposed to wondering what your left hand is doing on the entry, or in the pool. No, that stuff is done, that’s what you’re doing training. The mind’s got to be clear.

Brenton Ford:                    Mitch spoke about when he was training, one of the races that he did where he was at the Australian National Championships, in the heats, he went to about a second slower than what he’d done before. The reason he put it down to was because he was overthinking every single part of his stroke. He was wondering about was this entry right, how was his pull through, where was he exiting, how he went off the blocks, his hand position on the blocks, his fate, were his hips high enough. He was thinking about all these little details.

Brenton Ford:                    Particularly for 100 butterfly, when you’re overthinking things, the timing of the stroke and the timing of each of the movements is going to get thrown off by, might be milliseconds or tenths of a second. If that’s the case, then you’re not going to be able to perform at your very best and get anywhere close to the best time.

Brenton Ford:                    Now, with that time that he made, he finished ninth in the event, and only eight make the final. But he was fortunate enough that one swimmer in the final pulled out beforehand, which gave him a spot in the final. So, he was in an outside lane. When it came to racing in that final, he didn’t care. It was almost like a free shot. So, when he was standing behind the blocks, he certainly wanted to do well but he wasn’t putting the pressure on himself, and which caused him to not overthink. It caused him to just really clear the mind.

Brenton Ford:                    He ended up getting second in that race. So, the Australian nationals, from an outside lane, got second, went over a second faster than he did in the heats and ended up with a really good time. He told the story of how he was able to get rid of the overthinking and put that into a stroke.

Brenton Ford:                    That’s the first thing. Now, the second thing is the importance of regular filming sessions in small groups or individually. Now, one thing that changes here for the Hell Week Camp is the afternoon sessions, nearly, all of them, we’d break into three different groups. There was six or seven in each of those groups. And then we would do three different stations. Now, one of those stations was 30 to 35 minutes of purely filming and analysis and technique work in groups of two or three with a coach.

Brenton Ford:                    So, the three of us myself, Mitchell Patterson and a professional triathlete and Effortless Swimming coach Mitch[inaudible 00:04:53] We were working with two or three people at a time for 30 to 35 minutes, and we’d be filming them with the iPad. We’d show them that, we’d give them something to work on, film them again. It was just 35 minutes of really just intensive, detailed, stroke work. What each swimming got to do is we went through the week was work with all three different coaches.

Brenton Ford:                    Now, as you know, different coaches have different ways of explaining things. They look at different things. And so people they’re able to get a feel for what might work here for me? Because not everything is going to work for each person. I found most people came away with one or two key things to practice leaving Hell Week. They got them from the different coaches. So, it really can help to get different opinions and perspectives on things. That’s when you can really have the breakthroughs, which we’ll talk about in a second. But just being able to get some dedicated time, where you actually get to see yourself on the screen, and you’re working purely on your technique, on a fairly regular basis, that’s when we really saw the improvement start to come together.

Brenton Ford:                    Sometimes it wasn’t until the very last technique session that we saw the change happen because there had been enough time and enough practice put into it that the change was able to happen. So, it’s not going to happen straight away, it does take time. Now, the third one is the need or the … How do you explain it? I guess the willingness to be able to exaggerate some movements to find an improvement in your stroke. One example is a friend of mine who came along in the camp. One of the things that she’s done for a very long time is she’s come up really close to the surface after she’s entered the water. So, her hand comes up quite high, we call it, putting the brakes on.

Brenton Ford:                    I was working with her in one of these intensive techniques sessions. I kept trying to get her to go deeper with her hand after shed entered because it kept floating up to the surface. It wasn’t until the very end of the session where we said, just go stupid with it. Make it feel so so deep you feel like you’re just swimming really, really stupid. When she did that, she finally got a hand in the right position, which watching her swim allowed her to get a little bit more distance with her stroke because her hand was in a better position. It was creating less drag and it helps set her up for the catch.

Brenton Ford:                    Now, didn’t feel comfortable about really really stupid. It didn’t feel good to begin with, and she’s going to need to practice this for five or six weeks to have it feel normal and to be able to probably swim faster with it. Because at the moment she doesn’t quite have the rhythm in her strokes to be able to hold it and do it fast. But that was almost a bit of a recurring theme within the camp was, you’ve really got to go a bit crazy or a bit stupid with some of the changes that you may need to make in order to change it. Because if you do it just a little bit, chances are you won’t change anything at all.

Brenton Ford:                    Now, a bit of a caveat there is, that’s not for everyone at every point in the stroke, but it was certainly something that we saw a lot of. So, you’ve got to be willing to have it feel really uncomfortable. The fourth one is stroke rate. There’s a number of different ways you can find out what stroke rate’s best for you and how you can develop the ideal stroke rate. One thing that we did on the camp was using tempo trainers. We had our swimmers do a ramp test. There’s a number of different ways you can do it. One is, you can do 10 50s with tempo trainer. Tempo trainer is a little device that you can put in your cap and you can set it to beep X amount of times per minute. We had swimmers put this tempo trainer in their cap, go through 10 50s.

Brenton Ford:                    Some of them would start at 60 strokes per minute, and they’d increase it by three strokes every 50. So, the last 50, they’re doing 87 strokes per minute. We had them record their times and their perceived effort. Out of that, you find the sweet spot. Where the effort is around a seven out of 10, maybe eight out of 10. And the time you’re getting the most bang for your buck.

Brenton Ford:                    For a lot of swimmers, sometimes this was around a 73 or 74, but everyone’s different depending on their speed. But we were able to find that ideal stroke rate? Then we got them to do a number of hundreds at that stroke rate, trying to maintain it and get the feel for it. Now, with this ramp test, we see it as being your 1500 meter stroke rate. For this test, let’s say someone’s ideal stroke rate was 74 based on that ramp test. That’s roughly what we’d expect them to hold for a 1500 meter swim, provided that they’re fit and they’ve had a bit of practice with it.

Brenton Ford:                    Using that stroke rate, you can say whether or not you’re going to slow in some of your harder training sessions. It’s just a good thing to look at as opposed to just stroke count or just thinking of your technique. Because your speed is a combination of how far you travel with each stroke. We call that your distance per stroke, and it can be measured by stroke count. And also your stroke rate. So, how fast you’re turning your hands over.

Brenton Ford:                    Sometimes swimmers will only look at their stroke count, sometimes they only look at their stroke rate? But it’s really a combination of the two, finding that sweet spot for the two of them, that’s going to give you the best results. So, that’s just one thing that we looked at on camp. And that’s something that quite a few swimmers said they’re going to take away and work on and practice. Because they know that there’s opportunity there to swim faster by increasing their stroke rate a little bit from where they currently were.

Brenton Ford:                    Now, there’s another set that you can do. There’s a seven 200 step test, but you do need a coach to help you with that one. You basically get faster with each of the seven 200. The first one is going to be the slowest and the easiest. The last one is going to be pretty much all out. For that one you can record your stroke count, and you can have a coach record your stroke rate for that as well. You also want to record your time. Now, this is something they will often do it at higher level swimming squads. It’s a really good way to just see what the stroke rate is for the different speeds and the different efforts. If you do it, right, you should see an incremental increase in your speed, in your stroke rate and your stroke count as well.

Brenton Ford:                    If we say either those drop out, you know, there might be an opportunity there to be able to improve on it. The number five is the catch. I did a talk with the group before we did one of the afternoon sessions. I spoke about three things that I found to be really helpful when it comes to thinking about your catch. The three things were number one, set your paddle then accelerate. So, what that means is one of the things we saw with the number of swimmers was they were trying to go for a lot of power in their pull through or their catch straightaway.

Brenton Ford:                    Now, when this happens, if you try and pull really hard immediately, you normally always going to slip and it’s very hard to have a high elbow catch position. A better way to think about it is use the catch. Let’s say that’s the first quarter of your pull through under the water. Use that to set yourself in a high elbow catch position. So, set your paddle with your hand and your forearm, close to being vertical in the water then you can accelerate all the way through past the hip. You’re not looking to go for power to start, you’re just looking to use that as the setup. Then you can start to apply power.

Brenton Ford:                    With a number of swimmers, we’re able to get some really good results with them. There’s one swimmer in the first week, [inaudible 00:12:44] who he was really trying to pull hard, and probably pulling through with more power and effort than you’ll find with a lot of high performance swimmers. But because he was going so hard so early, he was spinning his wheels. His right was too high, and his speed wasn’t showing the amount of effort he was putting in.

Brenton Ford:                    It wasn’t until we actually got him to slow down, reduce the effort in that first part of the stroke, that he was able to be more effective with his catch and pull through. So, he was able to basically, have a better shape in the water and he was able to time himself better with the catch, the rotation of the body and the acceleration at the back.

Brenton Ford:                    It’s a good way to think of it, set the pedal, then accelerate. The second thing was protract and retract. This is in terms of your shoulder blades or your scapula. When you enter and you’re extending forwards, the shoulder blade or your scapula will be protracted. Think of it as almost bringing your shoulder forwards a bit. But then once you get your hand underneath your shoulder, after you finish the catch, you’re about to start the pull through, the shoulder blade and the scapula needs to be retracted. Which just means, you think of it as setting the shoulders back.

Brenton Ford:                    You don’t want to have it protracted in a way where you really puffing the chest out and bringing those shoulders back in a tense position. Think of an upright relaxed position. When the shoulders are there, you can be so much stronger than if the scapula is still protracted, or that shoulder is still forwards. I had them stand up, partner up with someone. We had them go from pushing down. One person would hold their hand up, the other person put their hand on top, and I got them to protract their scapula, bring their shoulder forwards. Push down, see what sort of power they had. Then I got them to retract their scapula and be in an upright, relaxed position, and then push down on their partner.

Brenton Ford:                    The difference is three to four times more power when you retracted. So, just getting them to think of protracting then retracting once you’re in the power phase, that can help a lot with how strong you can be with your pull through. I had them go through a drill called power diamond drill. Which is basically kicking face down in the water. You have your arms in almost this diamond shape underneath the shoulders. Elbows are out to the side flared. I had them just retract their scapulas a little bit in order to get a feel for that position.

Brenton Ford:                    They found that quite useful. Now, the third one is the high hip on hand exit. One thing that I look for when I’m coaching and doing underwater filming, is when the hand presses back past the hip, the hip should be high. A lot of swimmers that I’ve worked with in the past have been too flat through the hips, which means that they’re not getting as much length in their stroke. But it can also make it a little bit difficult to get the hand out and into the recovery in a comfortable position.

Brenton Ford:                    A good thing to think about is having the hip high or lifting the hip up when the hand exits the water. Again, I had them do a drill for this to practice that position. I had them do a single arm freestyle drill with the snorkel on, fins on, and just getting them to work on lifting the hip up as their hand exits at the back there. Now, number six is it takes time and everyone takes different amount of time to have it click.

Brenton Ford:                    For example, I’ve worked with someone for the last, little bit over three years and he’s come along to a few Hell Weeks, come on to a few clinics, and he’s worked with myself and he’s worked with Mitch Patterson. Worked with him for the last three years it’s really been the last six months or so where things have really started to click, and he’s gone from being a few minutes plus type swimmer in terms of these 1500 meter pace. Around 2:05 to 2:10. To now where he’s really setting himself up to get pretty close to between 1:40 to 1:50 pace. But it’s really only been the last six months that has started to come together.

Brenton Ford:                    We’ve had swimmers who have made that jump in the first six months of working with us, and then we’ve had swimmers who its taken a bit longer. Everyone’s different and it depends on where they’re starting from. So, one thing that he said made the difference for him was that about six months ago, every single time he went to the pool, he would work on one drill for quite a bit of his session. It was a drill that we use for working on body position. Because one of the biggest things that was slowing him down was his hips and his feet were swimming very low in the water. So, it was a lot of drag. With that much drag, it’s very hard to overcome.

Brenton Ford:                    It was about two months, I think he said. Two or three months that he worked on this one drill to help bring his bump up, bring his heels up and get him in a better body position. He was able to make a big big change with that. Now, when he’s swimming, you’ll actually see his heels are actually breaking the surface when he’s kicking. Whereas before that sitting about 30 centimeters below the surface. So, he’s made a huge improvement by just keeping it simple and focusing on one thing at a time.

Brenton Ford:                    Now, along with that and a few other changes with his catch and his mobility, he’s starting to really look like a swimmer. He’s getting so much more length through these strokes, and when he’s doing 100 repeats, he’s sitting at low 1:40. So, a huge change in his stroke, and that’s going to reflect in his times down the track. But everyone’s different.

Brenton Ford:                    Another example of this is someone who I saw him 18 to 24 months ago. Came to a clinic. I think he’s come to, this week, two clinics, and then he came on to Hell Week. Again, we really saw things click at this Hell Week camp. One of the main things that we did was just making an adjustment with her recovery. All of her stroke, all her timing her entry, her catch was getting thrown off by coming too close the body with her hand, where she was coming over in the recovery.

Brenton Ford:                    I got her to just make it feel like she was being quite wide with her hand. Opening up through that recovery and it just loosened up her shoulders, allowed her to have the right alignment. Allowed her to enter in the right position. And it also helped her with a catch position. She had made improvements with her stroke since the clinics. But it was just this one thing that was just the bottleneck of everything coming together. It doesn’t happen immediately for people, things take time. It’s just a matter of regularly, well, as often as you can just getting that checkup, and then we’ll find the thing that does work for you.

Brenton Ford:                    Number seven is an active warm up. One thing that we’ve done at Hell Week the last couple of years is teaching people how to use their bands and massage bowls before their training sessions. Now, one thing that we added this year was a three-minute yoga routine. If you’ve listened to the podcast in the most recent one, you will have heard the guys talking about yoga, and the three-minute yoga routine from [inaudible 00:20:11] swim. I had the swimmers, every single session beforehand, they would go through this three-minute yoga routine.

Brenton Ford:                    Compared to other years, people have been a lot fresher jumping in the water and starting. Often, the swimmers were quite sluggish as they’re getting in and going through a warm-up. But this year, there was a noticeable difference in how quickly they were able to swim better or to swim well. It didn’t take them 500, 600, 700 meters to get into it. It was almost straight away. Now, I’ll put that down to this three-minute yoga routine that they did before each session.

Brenton Ford:                    Number eight is educate, try and test. When I ran the first Hell Week Camp, it was really a Hell Week. We did some big big [inaudible 00:21:02] it was hard sessions, we didn’t really do any filming or analysis. It was more of a training week. While it was good fun and the people got a good workout. One of the things that I’ve been told from the people who come that they really come for is to improve their swimming. Because they can do the hard training anytime that they want. They can really kill themselves. I can get that done at squad, they can get it done with friends. But the reason that they want to come to Hell Week is because of all the filming, the analysis and the technique work that we do.

Brenton Ford:                    So, we did a lot of, I guess, education and filming, trying some things. And then putting that to the test in some challenging sets. It wasn’t all easy swimming. We certainly did some harder sets. Because it can help you really figure things out with your stroke and see what works. An example of this would be in the afternoon sessions, we had the three stations that I mentioned. One of those stations was the filming and the analysis that we did in in small groups.

Brenton Ford:                    That was the educate and trying new techniques. Then that the testing part was one of the other stations after that was a 30 to 35 minute set. So, one of these sets was … Got to remember it right now, was four 200s build one to four. Four 100s build one to four, and then four 50s building one to four. So, you’re just getting faster with each one that you do there.

Brenton Ford:                    Going through that set they really got to practice their new technique, and do that under speed. You don’t want to do all this technique work, continue to swim slow. You want to throw in a few challenging efforts there to put it to the test and start to change the habits and build that into your stroke at high speeds there. Now, number nine is everyone is different whether they’ll get faster in the beginning after changing their technique, or whether they’ll go to be slower after changing their technique, and then the improvements will come later.

Brenton Ford:                    In the beginning of the camp, on day one, we do a 400 [inaudible 00:23:11] trial. We end the camp with a 400 and 200 time trial. We saw in the first week, it was about 50% of the people got faster than day, 15% of the people were slower than day one. We saw similar on the second week, probably it was about 60% of the people got quicker, and 40% were a bit slower than the first week.

Brenton Ford:                    It comes down to a number of different things. One is how fatigued they are after training, doing two sessions a day for a week. The other one is sometimes the changes that they make in their stroke won’t actually be faster until they’re able to find fluency in rhythm to that new technique and develop the strength to be able to hold it.

Brenton Ford:                    That’s why I premise it when I run clinics, I let people know that you may get faster right away and that’s certainly common, but you may also get slower. So, you need to be willing to push through that awkward and uncomfortable stage where things aren’t quicker yet so that you can get the payoff in the end.

Brenton Ford:                    Then there are things that I took away from Hell Week that I thought it’d be worth sharing. Now, the Hell Week Swim Camp we’re running again, next year in Thailand. So, we’ve got two weeks. We’ve got the 12th to the 19th of October and then the 20th to the 27th of October. Almost half of the spots have been filled by people who are returning, and we’re going to open up the camp to those that haven’t been before on the Thursday for those in the US, and it’d be Friday for those in Australia.

Brenton Ford:                    You can go to effortlessswimming.com and check that out. There’s a link for clinics and camps at the top. Check out the Hell Week Camp. It’ll probably be full by either Friday or Saturday, as there’s only about 20 spots left by the time I’m recording this. So, if this is a camp that you’d be interested in, make sure you go there, check it out and book in straightaway, because there’s not a whole lot of spots left. Otherwise, I hope you got a lot from this podcast and I’ll see on the next episode. Thanks for listening.

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

The post 9 Things We Learned From Hell Week appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

00:58 Pre Swim Routine for Olympic Athletes

Tom Barton

Email: [email protected]

Testing video with Mitch Larkin

Getting started with Q Swim

3 Minute Yoga Routine:

Jeff Grace:

http://www.swimmingspecificyoga.com/effortless.html

Transcription:

Speaker 1:                           Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Brenton Ford:                    Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today, a past guest who I’ve had on before, Jeff Grace who’s a yoga teacher and he’s worked very closely with swimmers. And also another yoga teacher but also a physiotherapist who’s worked and still works very closely with a lot of the Australia team swimmers, Tom Barton. Guys, welcome to the call.

Tom Barton:                       Thanks, Brenton.

Jeff Grace:                          Thanks, Brenton. Thanks. Great.

Brenton Ford:                    Now Jeff, you’re currently in an airport watching baggage go by but the audio is still quite good and Tom, you’re up in Brisbane. I’m sure the audio will be good enough for the people listening to get a lot out of the call. Some of the things that I want to cover today is pre-swim routines that you’ve both used with high-level athletes and how adults and triathletes can use those in their own programs to help them move better and prevent injury and how you integrate yoga into swimming and the correlation you see between the two. So do you want to maybe … Tom, would you like to sort of start out with the pre-swim routine that you’ve used with a lot of the olympic athletes in the last couple of years?

Tom Barton:                       Yeah, absolutely. From a pre-swim perspective, it’s basically trying to unravel the tightnesses and the weaknesses that we develop during the rest of the time that we’re not swimming. So I tend to categorize them and keep it relatively simple and talk about the big five areas that are the major restricters for a good swimmer and sort of sequentially through We talk about pecs, lats, the abdominals, the hip flexors and the ankles. And whenever I talk whether it’s a swimming Queensland or a talent ID camp, I always ask the kids who addresses all five of those before they swim and it’s always no hands coming up in the audience. And I think for the triathletes and masters swimmers it’s even more important for that clientele because the amount of time you spend pounding the pavement and also the amount of time you spend on the block, you need to do more to unravel that tiredness than just the regular swimmer and particularly even more so than the elite swimmer.

Tom Barton:                       There’s a lot of of free speed to be gained by improving your body position and as you’re well aware, it helps you get into better shape so you can effectively execute skills.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. And that’s something that really has impacted the older we typically get, we just get tired or we move less and we’re not as mobile. So what sort of time should someone … Let’s say someone’s training three times a week, they’re a master swimmer and they’d like to improve their mobility and move better. How much time should they, let’s say ideally set aside, in an ideal world how much time could they put into a pre-swimmer routine? And then what’s the bare minimum to see at least a little bit of results?

Tom Barton:                       So I would say if we start with the bare minimum, I have got a three minute routine that I give out to the older clientele and also the kids that are coming straight from school and hitting the water and telling me that they have no time and they just have to jump straight in. So negotiated it down into a three minute yoga routine that hits all five of those areas. So that’s the bare minimum from our perspective. And I think everyone can find three minutes. And it’s also about getting the coaches to buy in on that because the coach needs to see the difference in terms of their swimming that the three minutes could make. And you’re going to make more difference in those three minutes than doing an extra 200 meters or an extra 400 meters in the water as a warmup. And if we go to more of an ideal timeframe 15 to 20 minutes is what we work on with our light guides, they’re getting paid to do it.

Tom Barton:                       So they’re often a bit better with their buy into it. But again for those guys, they have to see, they have to see the change and they have to feel the change in order to get them to buy in. And once they do, that’s from my perspective, that’s when you really, you see them buy into it and really start to develop and get better each time ’cause their skill acquisition is better. They have less niggles, all that sort of stuff.

Brenton Ford:                    And Jeff, you’ve worked with a lot of swim teams as well. How long is it taken to have the athletes or the coaches buy into two what you teach?

Jeff Grace:                          I think it’s been really smooth actually. I first off, I agree with Tom totally on the minimum effective dose and once someone starts doing just a little bit and can see just the benefits from when they first jump in and can see how much difference they have in mobility. And then also being able to have different muscle recruitment to gain that feel the water and actually have a real strong sense of what they’re getting out of it. That, that really creates that … That starts to create the buy in right away. But when I when I start working with the group, as long as there’s really that explanation of why they’re doing it, how it’s going to affect, and then they can have that relatability right into you what they’re doing in the water. I think that buy in happens right away as long as there’s that knowledge and then they can piece the two together. It’s a pretty quick buy in.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah I found the very similar thing coaching athletes with technique is as long as you frame it in the right way, then there’s a much higher chance of getting that buy in. For example, at clinics or if I ever work with someone one on one, then I’ll explain to them that, that it’s going to take at least eight to 10 weeks to change a habit and replace a habit. So to get them set up long term to frame it that way it works so much better than having them expecting to be able to swim fast straight away. So just being able to frame things in the right way can really make a difference with that. And in terms of this, let’s say the three minute yoga routine for your will that the athletes that you work with, Tom, what are some of the, I guess the basic movements that they go through there and how does it help them warm up for their swimming?

Tom Barton:                       So I always start, this is sort of the physio in me coming out, I get them to test something. So I get them to test either just like a standing streamline or what we call combined elevations that laying on your belly thumbs interlaced and sort of working into a streamline whilst lying on your stomach and to get a baseline. And then they just go through, they do a lat stretch on each side, and they do that for three to five breaths on each side just to open up that aspect of their body. And then they work into a down dog transition to push up, lower down into a cobra position. And they repeat that a couple of times. And then just a high lunge on each side. And it’s, I guess it’s quality. We’re looking for quality movement necessarily over quantity, focusing on connecting good body awareness and breath awareness as they’re going through it.

Tom Barton:                       And again when they retest, they should notice that it’s either going to be easier to get into the position or be it they just feel better and more fluid with the movement. And so you’ve got that, then you’re I think you’re halfway there to getting that buy in that I was talking about earlier.

Brenton Ford:                    That’s such a … I really liked that test. We used to do that at the clinics and we’d test a test everyone there and most people, the average was about one or two degrees elevation. And we sort of looking for about 15, 20% elevation. Is it over 20% that you aim for with the elite athletes?

Tom Barton:                       So [inaudible 00:08:40] sort of traffic, we’ve got a little traffic light system, so we say 15 to … Anywhere between five to 15 degrees, we consider in our sort of ideal range. Anything from zero to five is sort of in the ambo, which is, need some work and zero or below is the red flag needing to address that sort of stuff pretty quickly.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah, it sets. And when people do that, particularly adult too … I’ve had swimmers who feel like they’re actually quite flexible. But then they do that test, and they realize, oh, there’s a lot that I could actually gain from working on my mobility and that’s a great one just to kind of open the eyes up and show them how stiff that they really are. And I found that position that test is a really good indicator of being able to get into a high elbow catch position quite effectively. And so yeah having routines like that, having ways to actually improve that mobility without your static stretching, having it more active. That’s really, really helpful.

Brenton Ford:                    And I mean you, the way we sort of got in touch was you’ve been putting together an app for swimming Queensland that takes people through these mobility tests and helps them improve on that. Can you explain a little bit more about what you’ve put together there for the swimming Queensland guys and to share the methods and the strategies that you’re using with the Australian swimmers, and how people just everyday swimmers can take that and use it?

Tom Barton:                       Yeah. So the app is designed for the everyday swimmer and it’s basically trying to take the test that I can do with our elite guys and we might do that four times a year. We’ll get them in and we’ll do half an hour to an hour physio session which will be a full physio screening and then exercise prescription. But obviously people don’t have that access or that time necessarily. So the idea behind the app was to create a digital version of both the testing side of things but also the exercise prescription and also the underpinning education that goes along with what we give our elite guys. I basically put the app together because I was seeing with a lot of our senior guys that they weren’t actually getting, like they were arriving at high performance and not having some of the fundamentals that we want to see at high performance.

Tom Barton:                       And then teaching down at the talent ID level and the regional development camps and noticing just generally the skills and the body positions, the coordination that we’re noticing with our 13, 14, 15 year olds was a sort of year on year was getting a little bit worse. So rather than wait till they get to the high performance level and try and fix them, the idea was to create the app so everyone particularly in Queensland gets all of the information that basically I can give in a session with the elite guys. Everyone gets access to that information and also gets access to the ability to test and retest and actually see a visual representation of that combined elevation or the standing streamlined or the high elbow catch physicians. That’s the concept behind it.

Brenton Ford:                    And what’s the name of the app?

Tom Barton:                       The app is called Q Swim. So Q for Queensland and swim. So it was really nice. I’ve been working with Mitch [Larkin 00:12:19] for probably four years now and so he’s sort of come on board and he’s the face of the app. So it was a nice subject to have ’cause he moves really well. All the videos that we’ve got in the app of Mitch and the idea is to test against what we talk about as the optimal position. And it’s sort of the app split screens, a photo that you take with Mitch during the position ideally, and then you can look at exercises of how Mitch does the exercise and you can sort of learn by copying and building your own routines and that sort of stuff.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah, that’s fantastic. A really simple way to go through it. I did some filming with a physio therapist down here in Melbourne who’s worked with some of the Australian swimmers and just showing some of the tests that you guys do it at that higher level as a physio. And it’s just really good to show where there’s opportunities to move better which can help a lot with body position and catch and pull and it’s one of the things that certainly not focused on much at all for most swimmers, for most triathletes because it’s more just about do your work. You swim, you go up and down the pool, train hard, but there’s often very little focus on how people move. But for many people I think a combination of better technique and being able to move better, there’s a huge opportunity there for 90% of adults who are swimmers and triathletes.

Tom Barton:                       Yeah. I honestly think even though the app was designed for swimmers and junior swimmers and developing swimmers. Like when you talk triathlete and senior swimmers, the bang for buck that you can get by improving those couple of measures is as you can see from a skill perspective, it’s huge, but also if you improve your efficiency, you’re going to start a swimming PBs pretty quickly with not working any harder. Just getting a bit smarter by how you do things.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah, absolutely. Even with younger kids, I’ve had them at clinics and I’m surprised how stiff many of them are. Just to me my guess is it’s a lot of it is just time on the phone or the iPad or video games where they’ve got very poor posture throughout the day and you see that reflected in the tests and kids who are 10, 11 years of age should be able to do really well in the combined lateral raise test. But I’m amazed how stiff many of them are just from poor posture over a couple of years.

Tom Barton:                       I had a 10 year old earlier today who’s combined elevation was minus 22. So his swim coach sent him through to me ’cause she was saying that he couldn’t rotate very well, but he couldn’t get his arms above his head really. So it’s a common problem and I think from a skill perspective, if you can’t get into the position on land, you’re not going to be able to do it in the water under fatigue and that speed. So, that’s we need to make sure that you can make this shape that we’re asking you to make on land and then it’s going to be transferable into the water.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah, definitely. And Jeff, in terms of your yoga teaching and running a lot of clinics and teaching this stuff around the world, what sort of time commitment do you find people getting really good results with in terms of integrating yoga into their training?

Jeff Grace:                          I think when you look at it, the greatest result that I’ve seen coming is just whatever consistency is going to be. So a lot of times when I’ve been working with the age groupers, the typical consistency has been two times 30 minutes in a week. And then with more the senior athletes have been working with we’ve been just doing one time a week. But when it’s held consistently throughout the year, I think that you’re seeing great results for both. And when for what I’ve been doing, the majority of it with the younger guys … I shouldn’t say a majority, it’s been both. But with the younger guys, a lot of it is the pre-swim stuff and watching them get out of exactly what you’re talking about, their daily patterning and then getting them into going both mobility wise and then also just activating and body awareness wise has a huge benefit.

Jeff Grace:                          And then with the older guys, the more senior, the training center guys I’ve been working with, we’ve been doing a ton of recovery has been the consistent work and mobility within that recovery. One of the things I was going to say that Tom brought up that I think really kind of differentiates what we’re talking about when it comes to yoga and how this, I guess modality or intervention can be a little bit different than others, is both the breadth and the awareness aspect of it.

Jeff Grace:                          That’s the biggest thing that I’ve found from my coaching days where I used pretty much every modality I could think of. And what separates what I’ve been seeing with the yoga compared to other strength and mobility modalities is that key with the breathing and the awareness aspect. Because you’re doing everything with such great intention and then the connection with the breath, not only the effectiveness of what’s happening when you talk about mobility. But because of that awareness, being able to link movement is … And then being able to link the movement on dry land into the water, I think is so much more efficient, so much more effective when you’re using yoga comparative to other modalities.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. It makes a lot of sense because you see, well I see this when I’m doing analysis is there is a huge improvement in swimmers’ speed when they can get the connection from the timing of the catch and the rotation and the kick in when they bring that together. And I guess the more experience people have and the more experienced swimmers that I work with, I see that a lot more than those that are newer to the sport. And it’s quite a difficult thing when you are in the water because you haven’t got the stability of a stable surface, the ground and being able to train that and teach that with it outside of the water, I think yoga is a great way to be able to do it. And with your … Yeah with recovery, how do you use yoga and recovery with swimmers? What’s the process there? How do you get them to do it that way? When do you time it and how’s it sort of look in terms of a session?

Jeff Grace:                          When we look at it for the majority of the people I’ve been working with, majority of the athletes has been coming in right after practice. And I mean it’s usually given about a 15 minute window and just so that the athletes are comfortable and dry and whatnot. And then come in and really look at getting into the mobility aspect in a little bit more active of a way. Not Static right away, but getting into it more active. So keeping the body in that movement orientation and finding different ways of opening into the body that way. But then a big component is that connection with the breath again, because I think that that connection with the breath is going to really help the athletes start to key in on the parasympathetic nervous system. And get that side of the nervous system activated to allow their bodies to really start to relax and let go.

Jeff Grace:                          And I’ve found just being able to dedicate time to that process has developed a greater efficiency and optimization of the recovery process. So there’s that in the way of looking I guess the smaller periodization structure. And when you look at it in the bigger sense, when you get into taper phases and whatnot, it becomes even a little more on the passive side and just being able to understand how the body can release and how you can actually allow the body to you to let go, to give you the ability to recover more optimally.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. You notice a big difference in … Well, first of all, if you do the test. You notice a difference from if you do it before a training session after training session ’cause you warmed up and you’re a lot more mobile that way. And with the breath it’s certainly a big one for more beginner to intermediate students to you. I did a video just on how you should breathe when you’re swimming freestyle, just in terms of when you return your head to the water after you take a breath. You want to exhale a little bit through the nose and then just before you turn again to breathe you want to kind of exhale everything. You want to push it all out, and that it’s almost like a vacuum when you turn your head to breathe the air with the sort of naturally fill up and it’s a much easier way than if you either exhale everything straight away and return your head in. Or if you’re just breathing out purely through the mouth. And that that video had a 160,000 views in a week or 10 days or something. And it was just such a basic part of the strike, but I guess it’s something that basically is something that is relevant to a lot of people. It’s just Tom explaining how to not be exhausted when you’re swimming.

Brenton Ford:                    So just being able to relax and control your breathing when you’re swimming is a huge thing for many beginner to intermediate swimmers. And I think that’s why it kind of it resonated with a lot of people in why it got so many people sharing it. Is just that connection with the breath. So it’s a huge thing for swimming particularly when you can only breathe at certain times. It’s not like running.

Jeff Grace:                          Well. Yeah. And I think that, you know what, it’s funny that you talked about it. I’m not sure if it’s the exact same video that you’re talking about, but I was just putting together because I still coach masters in triathlon, a triathlete grouped in Vancouver four times a week. And I was bringing together an email for them to send out in the morning, and I was looking for at one of your videos and it was a breathing one and positioning of breath that I was going to send out. Because especially for the beginners, but I mean when you look all the way through, the not only the breath itself and being able to work with the breath, but then you talk about the mobility aspects. You look at the shoulder mobility, you look at this spine mobility when it comes to being able to position with the breath a lot better.

Jeff Grace:                          And that is obviously a necessary aspect when we talk about that in swimming and efficiency. So I mean it all ties together when you look at what Tom’s talking about with the pre-swim routine and being able to get the mobility, being able to get things open enough. Do you have the ability to get into positions that are going to give you … I’m sorry, I’m just having to walk around this airport a little bit here. I apologize on that guys. But to get into the positions, to have the ability to actually set yourself up for that technical efficiency is a huge thing to you. So I looked at when putting together what you were just talking about it in that video for the communication with my master’s group is talking about the mobility combined with the breathing, combined with how you can actually use all of this in the technical efficiency.

Brenton Ford:                    And you sent me a video a little while ago with a pre-swim yoga routine that I think would be really helpful. So make sure to include that in the show notes at effortlessswimming.com. And you’ve also got, yeah … I’ll include that other information as well that you sent through because when we did the podcast last time when she was about, it’s probably a year ago to this day I think. Because I have a feeling that I’ve put it out just before I was leaving for [inaudible 00:25:10] swim camp in Thailand and a number of the swimmers is who came onto that camp, had gone through some of the yoga routines that you’d sent through. And they really enjoyed them. They got a lot out of it. So I think it’d really good to include that.

Brenton Ford:                    And Tom so for the swimmer listening, let’s say you have an adult who’s between 40 and 50 years of age, they want to get better at swimming and they know that they’re quite stiff. What would you tell them? What’s a plan that you can put together for them to begin that process and improve it over the next six to 12 months?

Tom Barton:                       I think consistency is the big thing. So similar to what Jeff said, but if we talk from a pre swim thing, you can package it together with their swim training or their running training or surfing training. If you carve out five minutes and you consistently do five minutes prior to every single session that you do, and don’t worry about just whether it’s serving specific. I’d try and carve out that five minutes for every session. You’ll definitely see gains and it’s really important to do that stuff prior to swimming or prior running or prior to cycling because it puts your body in a better position to then start to optimize your motor recruitment and your skill acquisition and your body position. Which is ultimately what we’re after. There’s no point of people quite often asking me should I do it beforehand or afterwards, but there’s no point in training and then getting into a better position.

Tom Barton:                       You need to get into a position first and then start moving forward from there. Tying into what you guys were talking about with the breathing. Yoga is just … If you’re trying to design something that perfectly encompasses what we’re trying to teach, breath awareness connection, whole body movement, multiplanar movement. It’s a really nice umbrella term for all of that. So we don’t have to label it as Bikram or as a vinyasa or some sort of yoga or you don’t have to do pilate. It’s just like Jeff said, movement with awareness, connecting and breathing. And I really try to encourage all of my clients and all of the swimmers that I look after to breathe through their nose the entire time during that pre swim session because it helps to balance your nervous system.

Tom Barton:                       And when your nervous system’s balanced, you get better mobility without talking about that effortless effort, effortless swimming. You’re looking to find that point where your body and your nervous system particularly is centered. Because when you jumped in the water, sympathetic nervous system’s up, you’re breathing through your mouth a lot. Your heart rate’s going up. So we want to set a good nervous system time when you swim. It’s going to lift up a little bit and then like I said, with the three minute pre-swim routine, if you take that concept and find three minutes at the end of your training to down regulate the nervous system. And again, just by literally lying on your back, close your eyes, breathe in and out through your nose for three minutes, your nervous system is going to find a better balance and you’re going to have a better day and then you’re going to be more receptive to some post mobility work if you wanted to find some extra time to do that.

Tom Barton:                       But ultimately it’s about consistency. Finding the things that work ’cause we’re all pushed for time and that’s where the testing comes in. If you’re carving out five minutes of your day twice a day or once a day, every day, you’re going to know that, that five minutes is being effective. And if you’re not testing it, you’re sort of flapping in the breeze is what I say. Like, you don’t know what’s going on. So the whole the old adage of you’ve got to measure something to manage it. If you’re not measuring, or you’re not testing your streamline or your body positions, you’re not knowing whether you’re actually going to create and you don’t know whether you’re being effective or not working.

Brenton Ford:                    Where can people find the three minute routine?

Tom Barton:                       The three minute routine that’s you can either get that through the app, which is the Q Swim app or you can jump on to the YouTube channel. So it’s Q Swim on the YouTube channel and there’s a bunch of videos in there. There’s the three minute routine. And then there’s a few other things that are exercises that are embedded in the app that people can explore and have a look at. And yeah, the app’s on Google, it’s on the Play Store and the App Store and it’s a $2.99 a month. So I try to make it inexpensive so people don’t even think about the price if for 20 bucks a year they’re getting the same information that the Cat Campbell’s and Mitch Larkin and Ariana [inaudible 00:30:06] are getting on a weekly basis. They’re getting that for a couple of coins a week.

Brenton Ford:                    That’s about one 10th of my daily coffee bill. So it’s pretty affordable. That’s fantastic. And Jeff what’s been working really well for you as a yoga instructor, as a coach? What’s, been working well with the athletes that you’ve been coaching?

Jeff Grace:                          I’m sorry, in what way, Brenton? Or are you just in the way of time and-

Brenton Ford:                    No. Just in terms of what are some of the things that you’ve been doing more of in the past six to 12 months with the athletes that you coach and what are some of those things that you, think would help a athletes out there listening who want to become better swimmers?

Jeff Grace:                          I think one thing just to talk about where Tom left off there on the testing element of it. I think that he’s come up that app is an extremely easy to use and gives you some really great data and information right away. And then it’s set up in a way that you can keep going back and see where your progression is. And with what I’ve been seeing working really well lately and if you look at … When you look at talking about helping someone move through a six months period or 12 month period to really look at developing their mobility, strength and body awareness. One of the things that I’ve been working a lot with the athletes … Guys, I am really sorry here in the airport.

Brenton Ford:                    Sound like you’re on the run.

Jeff Grace:                          Well I am actually because I’ve got people cleaning and they seem to keep following me. Okay. I’m hoping that that got out of the way there and I can be a little bit more clear. So I apologize to you guys and I apologize to anyone listening about that. Now that I’ve finished my exercise for the morning, I think all of the areas that Tom has talked about with opening through when you look at shoulders, spine, through the abdomen, through the hip flexors and the ankles, are all huge aspects that we have had focus on. I think doing a lot of thoracic spine opening too has really helped a lot. I think when you look at that in the way of not only the pure mobility aspect through that area of the body, but when you look at the efficiency of shoulder movement. And something that Tom and I have talked about in just simple direction with swimmers in doing different exercises is also it just … They start to learn how to move through these gaps a lot better and a lot more efficiently.

Jeff Grace:                          And I think that that’s something that I’ve put a huge emphasis on is making sure that the awareness in that area and developing control and having the ability once again, to have the awareness and develop the control through these gaps. And the thoracic spine mobility I’ve found to be a huge, huge difference maker. And then also combining that with hip mobility. So you’ve been doing leading into different stretches/poses where we combine both the hip mobility and the thoracic spine mobility I have found has been a huge thing. I’m sitting in a corner and they came right up to the corner in front of me.

Brenton Ford:                    Make sure you lift your feet Jeff and they come and they clean underneath you.

Jeff Grace:                          I’m going to have to do next. But combining the thoracic spine mobility and hip mobility and there’s a good amount of that in this session that you have that you’ll be sending out to people. And then also another thing is shifting through developing core stability and cross body, a core connection. And then combining that with both ankle mobility and hip mobility. So something that we’ve been playing with that I’ve found has been really helpful. That goes into this gap awareness, the control of that movement, shoulder stability, shoulder mobility is a core stability and ankle mobility is simply moving from a down dog to a high plank or a high pushup position.

Jeff Grace:                          But then taking that into where instead of having the toes tucked, you come onto the top of the feet and you move the shoulders just a little bit for it as well, and then you then press back to your down dog. So you’re moving to that on breath, press back to down dog and then exhale and then you slide forward keeping that connection through this gap, so your entire way. Keeping that core connection and then coming into that ankle mobility. So that’s something that I’ve found when you look at something that’s very simple and something you can do activation wise before getting into the pool, that’s something we’ve done a lot with the swimmers I’ve been working with, along with some of the movements that I talked about. And I can send you some additional resources with the thoracic spine and hip mobility combination as well.

Brenton Ford:                    That would be great. There are some key things that I see working with the swimmers that I do, is often the hip flexes are very tight and the thoracic mobility as well. So that would be great if you can send that through and I’ll put it all on effortlessswimming.com under these podcast episodes show notes. And for people who are looking for more information, so maybe more routines, more yoga routines for swimming. Jeff, what’s the best place to get in contact with you?

Jeff Grace:                          It’s swimmingspecificyoga.com. And so my website there has a lot of the articles. I write a series of articles for swim swam, that’s yoga for swimmers and so it’s got a series of articles. It’s got the link to my YouTube channel as well, which is Swimming Specific Yoga that has a number of different videos of short routines as well as some pose, tutorial and educational aspects as well on the website. It’s got to pose database and on the website too, there’s a channel. And so for 15.99 a month, you’ll have access to over 40 yoga classes that are swimming specific and they range anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes. And there’s two new classes that come out each week, one shorter class and one longer class. And with it, one of the things that I wanted to make sure that everybody knew was the connection between what Tom is doing and what I’m doing and the things that we’ve started to collaborate on. The two products work so well hand in hand and I think it can be a huge advantage to anybody to use the two systems combined.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. I totally agree. And it’s still within my daily coffee budget. So it’s still not very expensive. And Tom so for the people … Anyone who’s located in Brisbane or surrounding areas, where are they able to go and see you for anything physio related? Do you offer your physio services to people who are not on the Australian swim team?

Tom Barton:                       Yeah, absolutely. Probably 50% of my week is with working with the elite guys. So there’s still 20/25 hours in the week for a general pop and I really, I think a lot of the times you actually get more bang for buck with those guys ’cause quite often they’re more stiff. They haven’t had the time to … They don’t get free physio and all that sort of stuff. So they might have not spent the same amount of time and resources in fine tuning their body and it’s quite often a bit of an eyeopener for those guys that how poorly their body is positioned in some of those swim specific shapes that we’ve discussed already today.

Tom Barton:                       So yeah, I’m just at the centenary pool now, so I’ve just got a studio here. It’s like a yoga studio/a physio studio/gym. And yeah, we’re here probably … We’re here seven, six days a week and then the rest of the time I’ll be out teaching with someone in Queensland or with the app now we’re sort of running regional development camps across the state for the next three months.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. And I think it makes such a difference when you go and see a physio who knows swimming. I’ve had … I’ve seen physios who don’t really know much about swimming and their recommendation is take two weeks out and rest. And then I’ve been to people who know what they’re talking about and they’ve actually, they’ve helped me kind of get over some injuries in the space of one to two weeks. Obviously not major injuries, but they’ve helped me stay in the water, keep swimming and basically just manage it and strengthen the areas that needed strengthening.

Brenton Ford:                    And yeah, just going to see someone like yourself who knows all of the intricate details about swimming and the movements you actually go through. If you are having shoulder issues or anything that’s related to something. Yeah, go and see a Tom up in Brisbane and the person is if you that I see down in Melbourne as well. So I have quite a few people who asked me for any physio recommendation. So it’s good to have someone up in that kind of Queensland area that can help with that because boy, there’s a big difference there. And your website, your physio website, Tom?

Tom Barton:                       Yeah. So the physio business, it’s called the Health Collab as collaboration, so c-o-l-l-a-b and then the app website is just qswim.co. So yeah. The idea again for the app is to help everyone sort of upscale. So whether you’re a recreational swimmer or even potentially like a physio that doesn’t have much experience working with swimmers, it’s a nice, easy to upscale, learn a bit about your body, learn different exercises that help. And then potentially if things don’t get better you can come to the physio armed with information and say, I’ve noticed that this tests I’m not very good at and I’ve tried out this exercise, but it doesn’t help. From a physio perspective that would be a dream to have a initial client come in with that sort of information and fixing them would be a very easy thing to do I think.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah, absolutely. So they come in and say my combined lateral raise is minus 22 and I just don’t know what to do.

Tom Barton:                       Yeah, absolutely. That would be perfect.

Brenton Ford:                    Well thanks so much for being on the podcast Tom And Jeff and I’m sure a lot of people listening will download the app and get on Jeff’s website and combine the two because it’s … I mean I’m 31, but I’m feeling like I’m at least 41 these days just picking kids up and down and I’m feeling a lot older than I was five years ago. And just making sure that you stay mobile and can move properly is something that’s so important. So I appreciate you being on the podcast and I’d love to get you guys on again soon.

Tom Barton:                       Pleasure too. Thanks Brenton.

Jeff Grace:                          Yeah. Thanks Brenton. It’s always a pleasure.

Speaker 1:                           Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to effortlessswimming.com.

The post How Australian Olympic Swimmers Improve Mobility with Tom Barton And Jeff Grace appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Our guest for today’s episode is Carl Reader who is a Functional Movement Coach and a Biokineticist (Exercise Therapist). He’s been helping athletes and clients move and exercise better through functional movements. Join us as we discuss warm up, squats and functional movement.

00:28 Carl Reader’s Background

https://carlreadercoaching.co.za/

Transcript:

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

Brenton Ford:                    Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. This is episode number 123. And my guest today is Carl Reader, who’s a Functional Movement Coach and exercise physiologist from Cape Town in South Africa. Carl, welcome to the podcast.

Carl Reader:                       Thanks Brenton and thanks for having me.

Brenton Ford:                    Now your background is more in the sort of medical side of things, but you’ve also got a lot of experience in the more sort of functional movements for athletes and swimmers in particular. Can you give the listeners just a bit of background on where you got to, you are today and how you sort of how would it help swimmers with reducing the risk of injury and improving mobility and other things we’re going to talk about today.

Carl Reader:                       Yeah. Having a background in the medical side and dealing with actually rehabilitating some shoulders and the injuries and across the board when it comes to sports. I kind of looked at the exercises we were doing and what we were prescribing to help the athletes. And I realized that a lot of the methods and the exercises that were being prescribed, weren’t functional or resembling natural movements. And we’re actually putting the bodies in awkward positions. And so I sort of moved away from the traditional conventional methods and started to really look at what are the body’s natural and functional movements? So what I do now instead of just giving you my athletes and my swimmers or even patients exercises, I teach them how to move correctly and functioning. And so that’s making a big difference. And it’s yeah, it’s saved a lot of painful treatments.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. I mean you see a lot of shoulder issues, particularly for younger swimmers, but certainly there are for adults and as well. And I see it, you know I work with all ages in clinics. We sort of started about 12 years of age up to I think the oldest person has been maybe in their 80s, but. Oh yeah. All the way through and you see to start often that decline in mobility, particularly through the shoulders and for triathletes who I coach a lot too often very stiff through the shoulders, just from the running and the riding. And that’s something I experienced myself when I started to do more of that too. What are the few examples of what swimmers can do as part of their warm ups and functional movements that can help them I guess better prepare for the training session, but also just reduce the chance of injury?

Carl Reader:                       The thing is, the most important thing is that they’ve got to, it’s got to get their posture right. So that’s the work we do outside the pool. But in terms of warmup exercise it’s all about positioning the body again, postures. So when they’re standing up on the side of the pool and they’re warming up their shoulders, if they’re standing just with their legs, you know, it’s just a normal posture. If their posture is not right, then they actually can actually strain their shoulder or they don’t get the optimal warmup. So what I normally advise my to swimmers to do is they’ve got to try keep a upright relaxed posture. We find with people with they tend to or and I had this, and they’re so scared of slouching, they go into this thing where they pull their shoulders back and they stick their chest out, which is a complete opposite extreme.

Carl Reader:                       So it’s to really just get the guys into that upright relaxed position and then to soften their needs. And what that does is it takes strain out the wood, I don’t know if you listeners are a little familiar with what they called the posterior chain. It’s all the back muscles and the fascia, which is the medical term for what I call like the body being clean racked. But you then proceeded into your stretches in that position. So you’re actually have retaken all the tension in the body and allows the swimmers to then start their warmup. So we can go on a sort of a warmup exercises just now, but that would be the first thing is to actually position them correctly before they start warming up.

Brenton Ford:                    That’s good. We sort of teach posture at the start of our clinics where the posture you generally when swimming is to swim toll and to swim proud. And it’s exactly the same as that, the upright relaxed posture. But I like that. I like that phrasing. I like that term because when you watch really good swimmers, they’re able to essentially maintain that posture while staying really relaxed and as soon as a swimmer starts to tense up, they’re working against themselves in a way. So let’s say a very good phrase to use, I like that. And well, to kind of going on from there, what would we say a one exercise or one movement that people could just start to do before they swim to then help them get into that process of working on it?

Carl Reader:                       Well, I call it the other shoulder swings, it’s where you lift your arm up in front of you had rotate it behind you. And what we see some much tends to do is they tend to keep looking straight ahead. So they take that arm up while they’re swinging their arm behind them and they keep looking straight ahead or they keep the upper body still in an attempt to try to increase the shoulder mobility. But they’ve got it actually as they’re swinging their arm, it’s really important to turn the upper body almost to 45 degrees, that keeps the shoulder and the body in a good plane. And so it actually is a natural movement. Again, that’s sort of what I’m trying to bring across to the swimmers is you want to keep it as natural as possible. And also rotating that upper body lifts and rod as you swing your left arm, as you wing your right arm, it actually improves thoracic, which is your upper back mobility, which again is important to be mobile or you know, to be functional.

Carl Reader:                       So we see that. Just to go over that again, we see that a lot of swimmers, especially beginner swimmers tend to keep their upper body still while they swing their arm behind them to try and improve shoulder mobility.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. That’s a particularly from being desk bound. You know, a lot of the guys I coach they work in an office, they’re sitting down all day and that can really just tighten them up through the thoracic spine. So with that sort of exercise, where would you progress from there?

Carl Reader:                       I like to do the shoulder press exercises, a nice warmup, so with no weight. So you gain you in your soft upright position, knees soft and you’re sort of punching up with … If you can imagine doing a shoulder press like in gym but not with your shoulders. What’s the way to direct it to the side slightly in front of you. So your elbows are slightly in front of your shoulders and you’re punching up towards the sky. And the most important thing there is that you look slightly upwards. We find that a lot of the guys, and we’ll touch on that with the gym program and when they’re doing shoulder press exercises again, they’re looking straight ahead and that causes a lot of strain in the upper neck and the nerves that exit the neck. So just looking a little bit like 45 degrees up in front of you and then punching up and down as maybe for 10 to 30 seconds just to get that rotator cuff in their shoulders to be more mobile.

Brenton Ford:                    I’m glad I have got a camera on this because I’m just going through this now as you’re talking just through [inaudible 00:07:22]. You mentioned in the emails before he jumped on the call. We have some videos for some of these exercises?

Carl Reader:                       I do yeah. I’ve got a few especially for the squats and for the warmup exercises, but I’ve still going to make a video for that one.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. Cool. That’d be great. I think, for the people who are listening will, I’ll put this in the show notes, put a link to your side Carl so people can get this plus a few more exercises [crosstalk 00:07:49] yeah, to include. Because it’s just, it’s a really important part of swimming. And we were about to go away in a hell week camp, which is over in Thailand. We run a week long swim camp over there and the first time I got introduced to this more sort of functional movement was a couple of years ago when, the coach over there he had. I think it was that the Dutch Physio. So the Dutch swim team physio. He took all of the swimmers over in Thailand through the basic. It’s like a 40 minute functional movement training program.

Brenton Ford:                    Now they sort of shunned it, obviously not going to do that before every session, but he took them through this full program and then they basically talk about a dozen of those to include in their warmup. And then we started to include that as part of our warmup, which was a little bit different than the very basic like arm swings and leg swings and that sort of thing that, we used to do. Like just, obviously evolves over 10 and 20 years. Yeah. So it’s quite different. It’s a bit more controlled now and it’s more, a lot more functional. And that’s really where it’s all starting to move. So what sort of things do you say when people start to include these types of exercises, what changes do you see happen and what timeframe do you see them happening?

Carl Reader:                       If it’s done regularly, you can see it in two to three weeks. We start to see big changes, but it’s again, it’s an unrealistic thing. So we got like if you’re desk bound it’s sort of counterproductive. So that’s a good instruction to the guys who do work, is to really try and look at their posture, get them moving because that will slow down the results or the progressions. But yeah it’s two to three weeks, you start to see good results.

Brenton Ford:                    And what about … And when would you recommend doing them? Is it just before swimming or is it something that the people should do it at other times as well? Like waking up or before bed. When would you think would be the optimum time to do this sort of stuff?

Carl Reader:                       Yeah, I do it when I wake up and obviously before in a dynamic warmup stretches before I start my exercise programs, but it doesn’t have to be too long. You’re not trying to be … Actually it’s good. I mean this is obviously your area, but just to get them in the pool, get the guys to … If it’s golf get them doing a few golf swings. If it’s a soccer players, get them kicking a few balls, you can’t really beat the actual natural action. You’re going to be performing as a warmup.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah, that’s right. We normally include the [theraband 00:10:31] work before swimming and I’ll just say if you do five minutes before every session, that’s going to make a big difference compared to doing it non end. Everyone’s got five minutes to include that sort of stuff. So yeah, certainly doesn’t need to take long at all.

Carl Reader:                       Sorry, yeah, there’s a thing where you can do also take like a cannibal and you can apply strength training before your sessions as well as to really build up that strength and get the muscles activated. But that’s getting more specific to the swimmer and the needs and the [inaudible 00:11:05] he’s trying to achieve.

Brenton Ford:                    And what about this kind of goes into it, what about gym or strength exercises and what sort of things can people change or do to build up their strength as part of swimming? ‘Cause we’re not looking to get bulky, we’re just looking to get strong. But also, I mean it’s really about functional strength when it comes to the strength training and swimming together.

Carl Reader:                       Well, it’s a great [inaudible 00:11:37] brands and nothing. I think the number one functional, it’s sort of at the foundational functional movements is the squats. And that’s something that I see performed in my opinion incorrectly very often. And so it’s an area that needs a lot of attention and the benefits of squatting functionally have, I mean I can keep you in for two hours and then … It’s incredible for the lower back. For swimmers it’s a wonderful way of listing out, specialties and [inaudible 00:12:05]. It really helps to improve posture. So if you’ve got those desk bound swimmers, squats are for me a fundamental to get right and I’m happy to share a few pointers or areas that the guys do tend to make when they squat.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. What, what would they be?

Carl Reader:                       Well, we’ve been taught through the squats to is because so many people have hurt their backs, to keep that back straight. And so the first mistake or thing I find when guys are squatting is it got this sort of military uprights, with a sort of upright chest. And the other thing we find is they are looking straight ahead at which you’ll find it when you … The whole point of squatting is to actually go down and pick something off the ground or to bend. So by actually getting into squat and to relax the upper back. So I’m not saying there must, obviously they must round their lower back. We find that sort of whole proud to stick their chest out look straight ahead position actually switches off the core muscles. So looking down about a meter in front of you it’s okay and the same when you’re swimming. You’ll notice when you swimming, if your heads up it’s difficult to contract the core. If you put your head down a little bit, you’ll find the core switch it on automatically. And it’s the same principle with the squat.

Brenton Ford:                    I think that’s where I … I’ve never really done squats as much before because I’ve always had issues with my lower back in that the kind of lowest point in the squat. And I think it’s because … I think I looked too far forwards when I do it. And it’s exactly what you’re talking about, chest in chest out, shoulder, the scapula is really retracted back.

Carl Reader:                       Yeah. You don’t want to do that.

Brenton Ford:                    So that’s the main mistake that you see people make?

Carl Reader:                       So that’s the first. Yeah the second thing is their knees go to far forward. So we find that often an instructor’s don’t even use go posture toes. I always instruct the guys that’s still too far forwards. We’ve got to let the knees just be in the middle of the foot. So what I call the soft knee position. So it’s just keeping those knees relaxed as they go down. People tend to then go, as they go down, they tend to let the knee go almost in line with the toes and they think that’s. They say, well that’s fine. My knee is not going past the toes. But that’s still too far forward. You’re going to find in that position their quadriceps and the hamstrings a slogan and dominate the movement. And even though they are working in the squats, your power muscle is your cores which is your abdominals and your gluteus. So that’s a big mistake I find.

Carl Reader:                       Another mistake people do is when they push up they actually they stand up instead of pushups. So they actually lift up from the lower back muscles instead of pushing through the ground, which activates the core, the glutes and the abdominal muscles. So there’s quite a number of this, you know, there’s quite a number of mistakes that the guys make a with the core. And also if you’ve got postural problems or you’re not in a great posture, squatting can be really difficult. So it’s important to realize, you know, that’s part of the work that I do online is to help the guys identify where their restrictions are and how they can reduce that or work around that.

Brenton Ford:                    What’s the process that you would typically go through with an athlete to build up to that? So let’s say someone hasn’t got the right posture or they, you know, there’s a few things in place that would stop them from being able to squat properly. Where where would you start first? What’s the very first thing?

Carl Reader:                       Yeah well get them just to see, to squat and feel where their limitations are, and they might say they feel their hamstrings are tight, or they fill in backs working or they don’t feel their core or where they feel tension, where they feel limitations. And then we then go back. So often you’ll find with people, especially the desk bound, their hamstrings are tight and the other muscle that takes a lot of strain is the hip flexes, in the front of the body. And so we work on releasing those through doing specific exercises that helps to release those muscles.

Carl Reader:                       And you’ll find with posture, especially squats. And I’m going, digressing a bit, but there’s a big move now to with the myofascia, the muscle that [inaudible 00:16:16] was talking about and also with stretching. But when it comes to posture, if you actually, if you actually get the right muscles firing in the right sequences, those muscles automatically release. And that’s really encouraging for people who’ve been struggling with stretches for a long time because you get this foam rolling and it’s quite painful. It’s very effective, but if you can, again, I’m going on about this. If you can really get the muscles firing in the right sequences, those muscles can release quite quickly, which is very encouraging. For swimmers and people have been battling with flexibility issues.

Brenton Ford:                    So you’re saying that in order to help just increase mobility and the flexibility of certain muscles, just being able to use them properly by doing the squats. That’s a big part of actually losing them.

Carl Reader:                       Absolutely. And it releases the lower back. I mean you’ll find people to do [inaudible 00:17:11] stretchers they find their laps are tight and often is one side stronger than the other side. You will notice a symmetry in swimmers. But it’s more than just the symmetries. You see the thing with those, the symmetries is they will say well your one side is weak, the other side is tight, you need to stretch the tight side, you need to strengthen the weak side. And that does have benefits to it, but you’re not addressing why is actual assymetry, you’re not actually addressing what is their assymetry in the first place.

Carl Reader:                       And so that’s sort of where we dig in to work out and that’s because often they’re using the muscles in the wrong sequence or they’re disconnected. Which is one of the big causes of disconnect is actually, I don’t know if it’s an Australia quite popular, but here in South Africa people tend to squeeze muscles or suck in muscles or they’re bracing and they’re not actually connected to how their body is actually working. And we can go into that. Maybe a segue into core strengthening.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. Just before we go into that. So a lot of people will sort of, as in like they use tape or they’re wrapping muscles to kind of move through there or to make sure that they don’t sort of fall apart when doing exercises, but it’s actually working against them. Is that what you mean?

Carl Reader:                       Yeah those taping just sort of is helping to try and activate those muscles. They’re trying to stabilize the joints, but if you’re in the wrong position, then as you said, so in a good way to put it. Well, you’re working against it. You’ve got to position the body correctly for those muscles to automatically work.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. Got you. Yeah core strength. What some key things to build in core strength ’cause it’s what we were doing 15 years ago was your basic sit ups and it’s certainly changed from there. So what are some of those key things that you’d like to look for or teach when it comes to core strength?

Carl Reader:                       Well, I think maybe just a brief overview would be helpful for the audience is we had the whole moving [polatis 00:19:11] where we had the sucking in of the drawing in the navel to the spine. There was research showing how getting that inner core muscle, the transverse abdominis to activate was helpful. And then we’ve now moved in a sense, some professionals that moved to this whole idea of bracing. Where you contract, what if you contract the muscles as hard as you can while you perform the action? My approach is that both those approaches are natural, but only in certain situations. So if you look at sucking in your tummy, that’s natural if you’ve got to get into a tight pair of jeans or if you are literally running for the toilet, you know, that’s a very natural action, but it’s not a natural action for swimmers or for golfers or for sports men.

Carl Reader:                       You’ve got to focus on so many other things and then trying to draw your navel to your spine. Then the other thing is the bracing is a really natural action if you’re going to take an impact. So if someone’s going to punch you in the tummy or if you’re going to fall off a bike or if you’re going to anticipate a heavy load. My only thing with bracing is the bracing is exactly bracing. So it’s actually not facilitating movement. And I think you shared this on one of your videos and you said in efforts to increase in speed. You’ve got to be in an almost relaxed position. And let the body sort of work functionally and I find with bracing. Although you are contracting in the core muscles. You’re sort of disconnected to what the arms and legs are doing. I hope that makes sense.

Carl Reader:                       So for me it’s really about teaching people with core strength. When you position the body in the right position, and this is where posture plays a major role, your core should automatically respond and it will respond according to the load. So you know, when you’re in that cast position, you have to pull back strong with the arm and get the lats working. The core should be firing in. But as you then roll into the next stroke there should be a bit of a relaxation happening and it’s, it’s Kind of … So it’s not bracing the whole time. I hope that makes sense.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s quite a difficult thing to teach because we do a lot of video analysis and one major thing that I see with as soon as those hips and legs are dropping is there’s this big arch in their lower back and there’s not much alignment through the spine. And a lot of that to me is obviously the core is not working in the right way. It also can be, they can be tight through the hamstrings and hip flexes and so on. But what would you or how do you like to teach? I guess engaging the core because it’s quite a difficult one to explain. And also I guess to teach, really get them to be able to use it in the right way where they’re not wasting effort and energy by bracing the core and sucking it in ’cause it’s that fine line between engagement and relaxation.

Carl Reader:                       So the engagement should be as I said automatic. And that’s what I teach is, and this is out of the pool obviously you’re going to correct the technique in the pool. But out of the pool squats are your number one core exercise. I’m not saying there aren’t other exercises that challenge core but just from a functional position. So if you squat correctly with a Kettlebell or just even if you’re in your 70s, you will get absolutely you’ll get wonderful core workout. And the differences in the olden days when you did the sit ups, you would do like, you know, 200 sit ups and you could barely breathe. I don’t know if you remember doing that and lifting your legs up in the air and you’d really feel the burn in the core muscles and that was Kind of the whole sort of approach was get that burn.

Carl Reader:                       But when you work functionally, when you work the core functionally with the glutes and the lats and the perks and the hip flexors, everything working in a beautiful sort of pattern, and then you don’t get that horrible … You don’t get that burn in the core. So often my clients will say to me I don’t feel my core working. But when I touch my muscles, it’s rock hard and when I’m swimming or if I’m playing a running, I just feel like my whole body’s been curved by the core, but I don’t really feel it. And I said, that’s exactly what you want to feel. You don’t want to feel this burn in the stomach. You’re not isolating muscles.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah that’s a good distinction. I had someone email me about two weeks ago and they asked … They said look. I don’t really feel my core when I’m swimming. And it’s like, well if you are feeling your core, then you’re tensing it way too much because that’s … I mean you might feel it if you’re doing back to back sprints or if you’re doing like a timed 200 if you’re really working you, you might feel it a bit then. But that’s the thing, it should just be switching on to the point where it’s just working, but it’s not something that really stands out like you’ve done. You’ve done 50 leg lifts or anything like that.

Carl Reader:                       I’ll give you a quick example here if you … I’m not sure, are you sitting at a desk?

Brenton Ford:                    Yes. Well I’m standing up but I can sit down.

Carl Reader:                       So if you’ve got a desk in front of you, if you sit with this upright posture. So what I mean by that is you sort of got the proud chest, you’re looking straight ahead and you put your fist, you make a fist and you put that on the desk and you push your first into the desk. You’ll tend to notice that your elbows and your arms and neck are doing the work.

Brenton Ford:                    Yup.

Carl Reader:                       And now if you just relaxed that upper back. So in other words, just drop the chest, I’m not suggesting you go into slots position, but just relax that upper back and now push down. You should notice the tummy automatically engaged.

Brenton Ford:                    That’s interesting. Yeah I can feel that difference. And you’ve probably got about, you’ve probably got a couple of people who are in the car or at their desk who are trying to do the same thing as well. That’s interesting.

Carl Reader:                       So what happens is if I say to you now, I want you not to push the arm into the desk, but just brace. You just like you make your tummy like really strong or you brace it. You can see the disconnect. There’s no effort coming from your arm yet, your body is now bracing and it’s like if you were to pick up a pencil, you’re bracing, lower this energy, but the pencil weighs nothing. Where now as you increase the pressure through the risk, you’ll know that the core will respond accordingly and that’s the same in any sport. You’ve got to learn how to get the core to adjust or respond according to the workload.

Brenton Ford:                    So a big part of that, at least through that exercise, but I’d say also for swimming is keeping that good posture but really relaxing through the back of the shoulders.

Carl Reader:                       Correct. And the upper thoracic spine that getting that spine. And what I do with some of this is when they do the core exercises and we can talk about it just now as well, the pulling and pushing exercises. Because that’s also really very good for your abdominal muscles actually are more efficient, work more efficiently in rotation, actually than doing some simple flexing exercises. And you’ll see that, so that works in that really well.

Brenton Ford:                    I like that. That’s quite helpful because it’s always, it’s something that I’ve always taught with swimming in terms of you need good posture to be able to swim well. But finding that right balance of engaging the core but not so much not bracing, that’s really helpful. So I appreciate you sharing that. That’s excellent. And I think you’ve made a pretty good point for why, I guess sort of talking about why you shouldn’t, you don’t need to brace it. And why you should just let the core kind of do its thing. What would be the argument that someone who believes it should really brace the core, particularly if you’re squatting and that sort of thing? What would be the argument that they would make against it?

Carl Reader:                       Against what I’m suggesting?

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah.

Carl Reader:                       I think that if you’re going to be a bodybuilder and you’re going to be lifting lack 100 kilograms and you’ve got a risk of injury in the shoulder and you don’t want to hurt your shoulder the idea is that you brace super hard like that, then you will be able to protect those joints. But you know, for me as a functional, I’m not designing, I’m not prescribing massive strength building exercise. I’m trying to improve mobility through joints and strength, functional strength as opposed to again, like I said lifting 100 kilograms or if you were here listening.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah, that’s good.

Carl Reader:                       There’s a few things, so sorry to interrupt you. There’s a few things at the bracing that I would want to share. Number one is your diaphragm. Your breathing muscle is attached to your hip flexors, so when you brace, you kind of that whole, those internal structural muscles they lock so that it doesn’t facilitate good movement and it actually, ironically, it doesn’t produce good spinal mobility while you’re trying to do the movement.

Carl Reader:                       The second thing with the bracing is most people don’t know how to breathe, so they actually, they kind of like hold their breath when they’re bracing so that’s, we know that’s not functional, especially for some of those you need to. There’s the whole buoyancy with the breathing with the buoyancy that plays a big role. And the other thing is it’s one thing to brace for a few seconds to take an impact, but to brace over a long period of time. I can’t prove this but my logic and my sense is telling me it’s not good for the inter abdominal pressure on your organs and on your cardiovascular. So it’d be interesting to look at how the heart and blood pressure response to bracing as well.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah. Plus, it’s it’s a pretty tiring this to do as well and most of the people listening to the podcast are, a lot of them are doing swims at least over a kilometer long. So it’s taking at least yeah, 10, 15, 20 minutes or more. So yeah, it’s a long time to brace for. So with your online program that you’ve got what sort of … How does that work? What sort of structure does that follow? Like if someone was to join, what would be the process that they go through to become, to become more mobile and eventually better swimmers. ‘Cause to me it’s such an important part of the stroke and when we do testing as in mobility testing, there’s quite often, I’d say there’s probably a 75, 80% correlation from sort of mobility to the speed and the technique of the summer.

Carl Reader:                      Yeah. So the first thing is just to get them look at … I get them to send through what they are doing. So are they doing squats, are they doing shoulder presses? So what their exercise program looks like and it’s really helpful for me if they can get a video of them doing it so often from a side view, especially for the squats or the exercise they’re doing. So I can actually look at their techniques. So for me it’s just really improving their techniques or even cutting out exercise and saying don’t, a lot of people doing that pull downs with their arms behind them or they’re just not in the right position. And I will say just get a video of yourself doing the leg pull down or give me a video of you doing a pushup and just changing the position of the elbows, of the arms. And they find it very beneficial because it’s often, as you know it’s these small 1% changes and the technique that makes all the difference.

Brenton Ford:                    Yeah, definitely. I mean, that’s exactly what we do with our online coaching, with our membership where people will send in videos normally once a month and we’ll make these small adjustments over time and I’ll give them say one or two things to adjust and it’s just kind of adding up and all these little things really make a difference. Where in the course of six to 12 months, 24 months, they really turn themselves into really effective swimmers with their technique by just having someone who’s got an eye for that stuff. ‘Cause the way I say it, like if I was to look at someone squatting or doing a press or anything like that, I wouldn’t know the nuances of it. But with technique, I’ve looked at it for 12, well closely for 12 years and really closely for about five years. And you can really see those little one percenters if you’ve got that trained eye.

Brenton Ford:                    So I think having someone like yourself do that, it a can make a difference. And I’m just thinking like, I’ve never really done squats just ’cause of my issues with the lower back, I think because of a couple of those things that you’ve mentioned. So I think that’s really helpful. So for those people listening, where’s the best place to get in touch with you and find out more about what you do?

Carl Reader:                       It’s go to carlreadercoaching.co.za and that’s Carl with a C, and I’ve got my just able to obviously read or learn more about me there on my websites. I don’t offer a membership as yet. It’s something I’d like to in the future with the videos but I do offer 60 minute consultations and again I like what you’re saying, I don’t initially need the people to be coming weekly but just to come maybe two, three weeks and we just get them on their techniques, they go away, they practice that, they come back and we take them to the next step.

Brenton Ford:                    Fantastic. I’ll make sure that they’re on our website at effortlessswimming.com so people can link to there. So that’s a South African web address for those that are listening. You’re probably the second South African. I had a guy [Roy Buck 00:32:35], he’s a swim coach from South Africa but living in Dubai. But it’s been great having you on and I appreciate you sharing all of that. I’ve got got a lot out of it and it’s something that I think is super important for athletes of any age, particularly as we get older. You know I’m 31 now, but I feel like I’m about, you know, 50 with just picking my two kids up and down and just probably being at a desk a bit more than what I used to at the moment.

Brenton Ford:                    So just making sure that I stay mobile, keep moving and maintain strength as well is really key. So thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. I think it’d be good to do a maybe a YouTube video down the track as well where maybe we go through like a console just like you’re talking, just so people can sort of see some of those things that you do ’cause I think that’d be really helpful for them. So Carl, thanks so much for being on the podcast and no doubt I’ll get you back on again soon.

Carl Reader:                       Thanks Brenton. Thanks for having me.

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

The post Why Squatting Can Help You Swim Faster with Carl Reader appeared first on Effortless Swimming.