Effortless Swimming

Last month, a 39-year-old swimmer joined our weekly coaching members call. She was training for her first Ironman. She’d been swimming for about a year—consistent, disciplined, three sessions a week, following her program exactly as written.

But there was a problem.

She was exhausted after every session. And her pace hadn’t improved in four months.

In this episode, we unpack what was really going on—because when you’re doing all the “right” things but not getting faster, it’s rarely about working harder. It’s about working smarter. We’ll talk about why consistency alone isn’t enough, the hidden mistakes that keep adult swimmers stuck, and how small technical and structural changes in your training can unlock real progress.

If you’re training for an Ironman—or any long-distance event—and feel like you’re spinning your wheels in the water, this episode will show you what to look at, what to adjust, and how to start moving forward again.

01:19 From 2:10 to 1:55 Per Hundred

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So when she joined the Effortless Swimming Coaching Membership, she uploaded a video from her lane at the pool. She’d filmed herself using her phone, just propped up on the side of the pool. So the angle wasn’t perfect, but I could see enough. And I watched the video once, then I watched it again. And I slowed it down and watched it a third time. And I saw immediately that her arm was collapsing in the front of her stroke. So here’s what was happening. When she would turn to breathe, her shoulders would over rotate, her arm in front would drop straight down. And at that point, she would have nothing in front of her head. 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. Last month I had a swimmer join our weekly coaching members call. She’s 39, she was training for her first Ironman,

and she’d been swimming for about a year. And she was very consistent with it, training three times a week and following her program. But the thing was, she was exhausted after every session. And her pace hadn’t improved in four months. So she was sitting around two minutes 10 per 100, and she just couldn’t figure out what was wrong. And we spent about 45 minutes on the call in total with a few other swimmers there as well. And I had a look at her video a couple of times. And I gave her one change, just one. Three weeks later, she sent me a message. She dropped 15 seconds per 100. Her pace went from two minutes 10 to one minute 55 per 100. Same fitness, same pool, same training volume, but just one technique change. And today I’m gonna share with you what that change was and why it worked. So when she joined the Effortless Swimming Coaching membership, she uploaded a video from her lane at the pool. She’d filmed herself using her phone,

just propped up on the side of the pool. So the angle wasn’t perfect, but I could see enough. And I watched the video once, then I watched it again. And I slowed it down and watched it a third time. And I saw immediately that her arm was collapsing in the front of her stroke. So here’s what was happening. When she would turn to breathe, her shoulders would over rotate, her arm in front would drop straight down. And at that point, she would have nothing in front of her head. So no arm in front of her head. And what that was doing was causing her body position to suffer, her hips and legs were dropping. She felt like she had to lift her head up quite high to get the breath, because there was nothing out in front to give her support and give her balance. And she was also losing a lot of her streamline position because when that arm drops down, we create more drag immediately. And she also was missing a large part of her catch.

And it’s a very common mistake I see in adult swimmers, particularly around that two minute to two minute 20 mark, they are often pressing straight down with the arm in the catch, so they don’t get much propulsion from it. So when we got on the call, I said to Sarah, I want you to try this. So I had to stand up and I had to reach forwards with her right arm, rotate her shoulders a little bit, 30 to 40 degrees. And then I had to practice getting a good catch. And what that involves is getting the elbow to bend and go out wide and out to the side, while the fingertips would point down to the bottom of the pool. Instead, what she was doing prior to that was the elbow would stay locked out. So the arm was very straight and just pushing straight down and dropping straight down. So I had to practice bending the elbow and getting it out wide and to the side. And I had to do that in her own time, just in front of the mirror,

just to practice that movement out of the water before she did it in the water. And I said, all right, that’s the catch position. That’s what we’re going for. And you’ve just got to make sure that you don’t over rotate because that was through the shoulders, because that was one of the lead causes of that arm dropping down. The other thing I had her do was think of the catch as the setup. It’s not the power phase of the stroke. So one thing she was doing in the early stages of her stroke was going pretty hard. She was pushing straight down, trying to generate a lot of propulsion, really trying to keep herself up because her body position was dropping through that part, but she was really fighting the water and she wasn’t really gripping it. And so this is where a lot of swimmers feel like they’re working hard, but not moving forwards. They’re pulling, they feel a lot of pressure on their hand and forearm, but it’s not in the right direction

and it’s not connected very well with the rest of the stroke because everything’s out of sync and out of time. So Sarah practiced this along with a couple of other drills. And then she sent me another video a few weeks later and she said in a message that I think I’m getting it, but I’m not too sure. And I watched the video and her arm was staying out in front to give her support and balance as she was breathing and she was starting to get the catch. Rather than everything just pushing straight down on the water, her hand or forearm was beginning to press back instead of down. So she was starting to get it. And I sent her a message and said, that’s it, keep doing that, keep practicing. So she sent me another video a few weeks later and her stroke looked completely different. She was balanced, her catch was clean. She looked a lot smoother in the water and the main thing was she didn’t look like she was gasping for air.

And when she tested her pace, her time had dropped from 210 down to one minute 55, 15 seconds quicker. And I asked her how it felt and she said it felt easier. I’m not working as hard, but I’m going faster and I don’t understand how that’s possible. But I told her that’s exactly how it’s supposed to feel. When your stroke is efficient, you don’t have to work harder to go faster. You just have to connect with the water. So once you’re connected, that effort turns into forward movement instead of wasted energy. That’s what the efficiency is. It’s less effort, more speed. And most women think, I just need to pull harder to go faster. But pulling harder does not help you if you’re not connected with the water. You just end up tired and the fastest women are not necessarily pulling harder or with more power. They’re pulling smarter. They’ve got better technique, better timing. And they’re keeping their elbow high so their forearm and hand grabs the water

and presses back and they’re not pressing down. So they’re connected. And that connection is what turns effort into speed. And if you feel like you’re working hard but not going anywhere, then it could be what you’re doing when you breathe. It could be that your timing’s out or your arm is collapsing out in front of you. And if you fix that, everything else gets a whole lot easier. So here’s what I want you to do. If you film yourself from the side above the water can be fine. Watch what your lead arm is doing as you take a breath. Does it drop straight down, push down on the water? So if you go frame by frame is then nothing in front of your head for a split second. And if that’s the case, then your timing’s off and that arm is collapsing underneath you. So what we wanna do instead is enter the water, reach out with that lead arm, keep it reaching forwards to support you while you take a breath and then roll into the catch.

So there should always be an arm or something in front through each phase of the stroke. That’s the position, that’s the timing that we’re going for. So if you’re not sure whether or not your elbow is setting up a good catch or if your timing is there, then that is exactly what we helped with in the Effortless Swimming Coaching membership. So if you film yourself, send it in. I’ll watch it and tell you exactly what to fix. So there’s no guessing, just clear feedback on what needs to change. So if you want to help fixing your catch position, you can join me at the Effortless Swimming Coaching membership at effortlesswimming.com. You actually get a waterproof camera included with your first month, so you can film yourself easily. You can upload the video myself and the other coach Tasman will analyze it and tell you exactly where your elbow is, what your timing is like and what the main thing is to focus on. So then you work on that change

until it becomes automatic and a lot of swimmers start to feel a difference within a couple of weeks and then the times will start to drop after that. And quite often, they feel easier or they don’t put in as much effort for the same speed and then their time start to get quicker. So if you’d like to join us in the Effortless Swimming Coaching membership, links in the description, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.

The post If Your Arm Collapses When You Breathe, Do This with Brenton Ford appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

What would drive someone to voluntarily swim through the most dangerous ocean channels on the planet — no wetsuit, no cage, no way out except forward?

In this episode, we sit down with Mark Sowerby, one of the few athletes in the world to complete the Ocean’s Seven — often described as the Everest of open water swimming — a feat achieved by just 36 swimmers.

His new film, Don’t Be Prey, captures a decade-long pursuit across five continents and seven of the most brutal channels on Earth. From the freezing Irish Sea to the shark-patrolled waters of Hawaii, it’s raw, unfiltered man versus nature — no protection, no shortcuts.

But this isn’t just a story about distance or danger.

After a life-changing event leaves him searching for direction, Mark channels his anguish into purpose with the help of coach Tim Denyer. Together, they build a mindset around one simple but powerful mantra: keep the stroke steady, don’t splash, keep the heart rate down — don’t be prey.

We go beyond the film to explore the swims that nearly broke him, the unseen moments of doubt, and what the ocean taught him about fear, patience, resilience, and staying calm when everything around you is chaos.

This is a conversation about endurance — not just in the water, but in life.

Let’s dive in.

3:50 Swimming The Ocean Seven

https://www.dontbeprey.film/

Trailer for film:

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Yeah well you’ve got to have a good reason to do it and ideally for me I like layering, I like the idea of having layers of reasons and what I found when I get into those really difficult times I start to literally like a picture of a Rolodex, the old Rolodex I’d be almost going through the files of all of the things in my life and trying to find something to grab onto that is the reason for this swim and it’s funny what matters to you at different times so having one reason is probably not enough it might be enough for one swim but it’s not enough for all of them and so I had you know layers and layers of reasons and you know sometimes it was that you know I wanted to rebuild my courage to go after some of the people that that had done these things to us so you know at some level there’s justice and there’s revenge and I’ll picture them in my head and all that sort of stuff and all the but other times there was it was very personal or and and or it might you know might

have been too you know for Heidi or the boys and so I think having all those layers and then being able in your own mind to choose what’s important to you on the day not knowing what that’s going to be and it was funny it’s funny and you throw lines at yourself so I throw lines at myself so with the cook straight it was because I was really you know not fit enough for that one is is you know one on the ocean seven list it’s got you know one remaining two remaining three remaining if I got the cook straight down I have one remaining so it was just one remaining because it’s not as long a swim but for the north channel it was what the thing that got me over in the end was I said to myself because I knew it was a swimmable day the only thing that stops you today is you and once I owned the success or failure of the swim it was like I dug in so I took away all the excuses of other things that were going to stop me and decided the

only thing that could stop me was me and that wasn’t a better thing that was going to stop me welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life here’s your host Brenton Ford

what would drive someone to voluntarily swim through the most dangerous ocean channels on the planet without a wetsuit without a cage and no way out except forward today’s guest is Mark Salaby one of the very few people to take on the ocean seven and just one of 36 swimmers to have completed it successfully and it’s often described as the Everest of open water swimming in his new film don’t be prey it follows a decade long pursuit across five continents and seven of the world’s most brutal channels from the freezing Irish sea to the shark patrolled waters of Hawaii no wetsuit no protection just man versus mother nature I’ve already seen the film and honestly it’s the best swimming film I’ve ever watched not because of the distances or the danger but because of what sits underneath it all after a life changing event it leaves Mark searching for direction and his coach Tim Denier helps him turn anguish into purpose

and the mantra becomes simple but critical keep the stroke rate steady don’t splash keep the heart rate down don’t be prey and it’s not just a story about survival in open water it’s about resilience healing and what happens when you commit to something so big it reshapes who you are in this episode we go behind the film the swims that nearly broke him the moments of doubt that no one sees and what the ocean taught Mark about fear patience and staying calm when everything around you is chaos let’s get into it so um Mark in 2015 you’re something with channel yep you raised 1.2 million for charity and then it wasn’t another until seven years later that you did your next swim as part of the ocean seven yeah so what led to wanting to do the ocean seven yeah so I’d heard about the ocean seven when I did the English channel and thought that is something that I never want to do and then I knew Lytton Mortensen a little bit as well

and he was the first Australian to complete the ocean seven and and I think was seventh or eight or something like that in the world and everyone was racing to be the first from their country and so I followed his journey I suppose you know sometimes things in life don’t go the way that you would hope and we’ve done the English channel I’d quit my work and a bit under two years later that company ended up being uh attacked in a very public short selling campaign uh through Australia and and that ultimately led to that company um being taken out so as part of that process I found that to be it was quite a traumatic process and I suppose the definition I didn’t see it coming you know the definition of of trauma really is that it happened suddenly and it’s unexpected and and it hurts but I you know I sort of thought I was um

I thought I was a pretty resilient tough guy I you know I was mid 40s by then you myself pretty well and uh and had done the English channel I had raised all that money had built a really big company um and you learn a lot through that process and then when it really came down to an awful event I ended up falling in a heap and that really lasted for a few years so I ended up at at one point uh twice actually sitting out on a what I call the burly bench at burly heads and and you know looking out at the ocean and seriously considering um swimming out uh so when you get to that level of pain and suffering I think uh clearly you know you need help and the help for me came in the form of Tim Det Tim Denier who was my English channel coach who who popped in for a half an hour let’s have a beer for Christmas on his way through because he’s married to an Australian girl and and uh and I know he was shocked at at my condition and and where I was at and ended

up staying for seven hours and several coronas and and through the course of that uh convinced me that uh that the ocean seven would be a good purpose now this was November 2019 so it’s literally two months before three months before COVID so probably just as well and so so the the line that Tim got me on was um because I said no I like I’ve been this channel was so hard I didn’t have wanted to do that again and couldn’t imagine doing swims that were harder and particularly over you know what was going to be a multi-year project and Tim said to me um you know I’ve never coached anyone to do the ocean seven before why don’t we do it together

so we did and that’s how that’s how it started so back into training and you know takes a quite a while to get a middle-aged man body moving again and and that gave me some purpose do you do you feel like him asking to do it together was something that really helped like to have a teammate there because it’s a for the most part you know it’s a solo sport with all the training but obviously it’s a team thing with all of the uh trips over and you know your wife helping a lot and all that sort of stuff like was it that that really sort of triggered things for you or yeah that was uh that was the winning line like I you know life’s about winning moments and Tim won that moment and for me really and so uh you know I remember it vividly and and uh and from that and then sort of started to think oh my god what have I can but then you sort of jump on the internet a bit more and start looking at it and reading

the horror stories of shark attacks and jellyfish dings and intensive care units and all those things so but for sure it was that was Tim’s I mean you know Tim and I had a really great bond with Tim I think Tim’s a special human on many levels and um and so you know it was a privilege to be asked and it seemed I suppose I understood that I needed something and you know I’d been in a hole for a couple of years and it still wasn’t over and so I needed something else to to to grab on to and then leading to that first swim what was your headspace like were you were you thinking uh like this is doable but it’s going to be a real challenge or were you doubting yourself going into that swim how how were you so similar I did apply myself really well because I always when I did the trend rooms he trained me for the English channel and he had hit a lot of Ks for trend so I did every single lap he told me to do

exactly the pace he told me to do it I just figured that he would have a process that would get me fit enough then Tim was the person that took me across and and so I followed I was point and shoot and same as this I just figure that the only way to get across these big things particularly not being you know very good swimmer is was to was to follow the process and to be diligent and that’s not just on the physical side but you’re also trying to develop your mental side now the Molokai channeling I was straight to the stats and and in the year before COVID so the year before was just when I committed myself to these swims because Molokai was first which is a bit scary so I think there were 17 attempts eight people didn’t get across four knocked out with jellyfish and four knocked out with shark attacks and then only two actually made it so the rest were just exhaustion so that’s 45 ks overnight through shark infested

waters no shark no shark cage or anything so and I look looking back at I mean in terms of the training I trained well but looking back at that swim I remember I’m says oh wow that’s so brave and actually but but to be frank it wasn’t that brave in a sense I suppose to be brutally honest I was still at that point that if I got eaten I wouldn’t have minded you know so it was sort of like a false courage because I didn’t really care what happened and and and the nice thing about that the whole journey is that changes but but at that point it was like well if I get taken it’s you know it’s better than doing what I was thinking about doing just swimming out from Burley so yeah so along the way we got fit again and I was very lucky the group down in Melbourne got me and Chloe McCartle organized for me to go on the U24 swim as training and then you know the community’s so amazing Val Kalmokov stepped up out of the blue and said looking at do something

else before Molokai’s at 10 days before he took me down the Derwent even though he was heading home and so we did a nine hours from down the Derwent knocked over that 34 ks and and that got me ready physically and mentally for the Molokai challenge and with the with the movie so sort of just

fell into fell into a place where you had someone there filming the English Channel swim and then ultimately all the other swims as well and that’s how you’re able to put together this documentary in this film and did you feel a extra pressure with having everything on on camera did that add a certain element to the swims it did for the English Channel like I didn’t want the documentary guy to be there but we hadn’t raised enough money so that was very kind of him to to do it for free and then to put together this sort of 41 minute you know YouTube English Channel film and the script that day sort of played out pretty well it was quite tight and and that’s become a really good resource for English Channel swimmers to see actually how it all works and how you get fed and and how it looks at the end and all those things so so that was just a gift it was you know this is an accident of history and and because that

was so good when I went back to Molokai I wasn’t really I knew no one had done an Ocean 7 documentary but I didn’t expect to get it done so what we decided to do is rather I think in these situations it’s better to keep the optionality open if it turned out which is the way it’s turned out imagine if I had to go back and swim it to get you know good I’d probably get eaten so so you know I think you just Russian rule it out of Molokai so so so I just got a local guy that had been that the captain recommended just to film it and film us before and after and just to see just in case I made it and not really expecting to get across but then we did so then I went back to the documentary guy Jeff Sanger who originally did it and said to him can you come and film the rest and just to see what happens and he said to me but mate swimming’s so boring you know no one’s going to want to watch this I said well let’s just film it and see

what you think and then after he saw Catalita and saw me jump in the in the dark and you know great white breeding ground and I don’t think there’s anything more primal for a human being that’s seen jaws or anything then to jump into the dark ocean and great white breeding ground he’s like this is nuts no one’s going to believe this and and then it just we just sort of rolled it out and we did no script there was so everything was filmed as we went there’s not reenactments or anything and and then of course then he you know he started to meet the other swimmers and the community and that was what really grabbed him and that’s one thing that I noticed watching the film is and you mentioned this to me when you allowed me to watch it you said like it’s it’s not about me it’s about it’s about everyone else and it certainly certainly is and I think I mean anyone who’s probably listened to this podcast is part of some swing community and

there’s there’s so many different open water groups all over the world and they’re really tight knit they’ve got this love for just being in the water often cold water as well but it really bonds people together and and when I think about a lot of my really good friends it’s come from swimming because there’s something about just putting in the hours and the and the case in the pool or in the open water that that can bond you together in a in a very special sort of way yeah and so on this sort of you know rehab journey that I was on which is really what it was I mean there were layers to the ocean seven journey for me and one of those was getting myself back to you know so hopefully a better version but also you know trying to rebuild my courage and various things and there’s nothing quite like those ocean swims to help you with that but the turning point where the was the Gibraltar swim and I had you know Bengi from Turkey and Jamie from Scotland and Paul from

England and and obviously we had Tim with us as well and so we got to swim that as a you do that as a pot of four and something about this group and and the quality of those humans their joy and their love of swimming their excitement and the day we got and all the things that went with it that you suddenly can build a lifelong bond with someone that you’re with for three or four days now some of them were then the Croatia swim camp that Tim had on afterwards which is the cold water swim camp which I was there for the north channel because getting cold water in Australia is a bit challenging so then I went to Croatia and met another 30 or 40 people a lot of whom were coming into their first swim but there’s something beautiful about this group of people from all walks of life who don’t care what you do or where you’re from all heading towards the same goal the same experience the openness and the and the joy and

I don’t know there’s a there’s like a happiness to people that are living out on the edge a different happiness it’s like a self-discovery you know some level I suppose of pride in

in having the willingness to take on something that’s really awful and then there’s the learnings that come as you as you do those things too and with with all those swims you want to you mentioned the north channel was the toughest swim that you did take me through the the moment that you realise in the swim like this is going to be a long day out this is this is going to be one of the big challenges pretty experienced by then so so the two toughest uh in well I mean in terms of toughness the English channel was really tough because it was the first time I’d ever experienced that level of pain and suffering for that long and it was cold enough back then so it was sort of 15 16 when I did it it seems to have been a bit warmer in recent years but and then Molokai is obviously really really long it’s dark you know swimming at night and you can feel sharks coming in and various stuff so the big thing with Molokai I found was uh dealing with fear and then but I think that the north

channel’s dealing with something altogether more horrible than that and and it’s the cold and I did a lot of cold water training I was getting pretty good at it too so I’ve been and I’ve been through that process so I understood mentally how to deal with it but you just never know when the cold’s going to get you and I knew I was in trouble with the cold two and a half hours in like I’m two and a half hours in and going oh my god I can feel this getting into me already and I’m and I’m swimming you know swimming you try and swim at a higher cadence to to keep your your warmth and all those things and I thought well I’ve got 10 hours to go how how am I possibly gonna get this done and you know it was 11 12 degrees when I got in I think most of the day I got a pretty good day as far as north channels go probably in the top quartile uh that was ended up being sort of 13 14 um we got some crazy weather at different

times but then it died down I got stung but not too much uh so from the Lines mains um and they were you can treat them like a bit of an electric shock and get me going again but once that cold started to get into me um then my whole body started to really suffer

and you know so that’s the only swim I’ve really thought about getting out

at six and a half hours halfway basically and I couldn’t imagine finishing this thing at all and then nine and a half hours was by then it was six and a half hours looked good

I just have an experience suffering like that branch and I just can’t I can’t explain you know I mean I’ve had an accident since then I broke my leg and blew my knee out and that pain I’d never experienced before but it was nowhere near as bad as every moment of the north channel you make it sound so appealing oh my god yeah but you learn so much like it’s like I’ve never been the beauty of the north channel and that experience is that it’s stricken me completely and it’s almost like when you’re out in the ocean and suffering like that in every moment that you get to look into your own soul and you see you get to see what’s there good or bad

and so we you know in the end Tim did a magnificent job of just getting to the next feed and doing different things immensely and physically and feeds hearty was there as well and we you know we eventually found a way across well what are some strategies that you either use that day or you’ve you’ve learned so long in the way that’s helping you that you know to help you get through those tough situations yeah well you’ve got to have a good reason to do it I can’t and ideally for me I like layering I like the idea of having layers of reasons and and what I found when I when I get into those really difficult times I start to literally like a picture of Rolodex the old Rolodex I’ve been almost going through the files of all of the things in my life and and trying to find something to grab on to that is the reason for this swim and it’s funny what matters to you at different times so having one reason is probably not enough

it might be enough for one swim but it’s not enough for all of them and so I had you know layers and layers of reasons and you know sometimes it was that you know I wanted to build rebuild my courage to go after some of the people that that had done these things to us so you know at some level there’s justice and there’s revenge and I’ll picture them in my head and all that sort of stuff and all the but other times there was it was very personal or and and or it might you know might have been too you know for Heidi or the boys and so you I think having all those layers and then being able in your own mind to choose what’s important to you on the day not knowing what that’s going to be and it was funny it’s funny and you throw lines at yourself so I throw lines at myself so with the cook straight it was um because I was really you know not fit enough for that one is is you know one on the ocean seven list

it’s got you know one remaining two remaining three remaining if I got the cook straight down I had one remaining so it was just one remaining um because it’s not as long a swim um but for the north channel it was um what the thing that got me over in the end was I said to myself um because I knew it was a swimmable day the only thing that stops you today is you and once I owned the success or failure of the swim it was like I dug in so I took away all the excuses of other things that were going to stop me and decided the only thing that could stop me was me and that wasn’t going to be the thing that was going to stop me I remember doing the rotten ass swim and and I got cold about 13 k’s in and I just said to myself you’re lucky to be here you’re lucky to be here as in like you know it’s fortunate that this is a problem that you’ve created for yourself so it’s like yeah there was just that line that I kept

repeating to myself you can solve that if you want that skinny like if you’re you know one of my skills is staying fat so it’s not fat enough Brenton

well next next time yeah hopefully there won’t be a next time you know well I’ll just like I’ll get better prepared I think that’s right more food yeah yeah so um yeah it’s uh it’s funny what can’t what goes through your through your mind in these these tough situations and I’ve found that even within like difficult uh like training sessions you know when you yes you might you can tell that your mind is saying to you it’s like like you don’t need to do this it’s like you can get out like it’s but if you can identify those thoughts and then go actually I don’t need to listen to that you can just let it fall by the wayside well that’s the power of it well that’s been the power of it for me is that when I was doing the two hour training sessions and uh in the water and I didn’t use music or anything else so I decided that I needed to be used to being in my own head but being in my own head when I was in a really bad way was just an awful place and so you know you’re crying into your goal sometimes

like it’s um and you’re screaming at yourself how can this be me and how can this be my life and how did these things happen to me you know what did I do to deserve this and all the things that people do when they’re in that sort of victim mentality and and I suppose that’s where I think partly the beauty of the film comes in is that is that don’t be prey mentality which is sort of for me was don’t be a victim and take control of those things in your life that that you can you can’t take control of everything and that’s the other thing I suppose that the swims do is that you know you control everything you can your nutrition everything else but ultimately you have to sort of give yourself to the ocean and the day not knowing what you’re going to get and find a way across so you get very comfortable with uncertainty but in the face of knowing you’ve done the perfect preparation yeah you have to allow allow the possibility of failure to

to happen because there’s only so much you you can do isn’t there just make sure you’re not the reason yes yeah you don’t pull yourself out of the water and all those sorts of things which only did even even in the North Channel with the where that line came from don’t be don’t be prey you’re telling that story last night at dinner and I can you tell that tell that story again and I quite like how you used it on that swim as well because I yeah I find that quite interesting and I don’t it’s it was quite a good one. Well there’s a very famous lady Dr. Angel Yanagihira who’s the sort of world expert in jellyfish and she’s a shark expert as well and and literally a mermaid so we were Tim and I went to to her house and she’s a professor at the University of Hawaii and what she’s famous for amongst other things is that she’s developed a jellyfish cream for box jellyfish in particular for the Navy SEALs so it was a seven-year project she told us and

you can imagine with Navy SEALs like they’re doing an operation and they put this stuff around their necks as particularly so that they can breathe if they get stung there then they’re dead not from the jellyfish sting but from people shooting them and so she developed that and we all use that as in the Molokai Channel and it lasts about four hours and it’s certainly better than nothing and definitely I was getting stung early and it seemed to help I definitely helped so we’re in her her house is a lab too she’s one of those people and she’s got all these 20 litre sort of paint buckets everywhere full of dangerous crazy creatures that she’s getting venom out of and various other things and and that she gets this cheeky look on her face and she says to Tim and I she says so boys we need to talk about sharks and you know obviously Molokai Channel is just chockers full of sharks you’re at 700 meters of water there’s sharks

everywhere and she said to us boys don’t worry about it there’s going to be any sharks around when you’re swimming they’ll be around you the entire time that you’re out there they’ll just be there and they’ll know you’re there she said so the only way you get across this thing is that you need to remember that you’re a big ocean swimmer which is what they call them you’re a big ocean swimmer you belong out there you need to keep your heart rate down keep your stroke rate down stay consistent don’t be prey and there was just like this moment like this light by my head exploded I thought oh my god and I realized that she you know she’d literally changed my life because I straight away flipped that to the problems that I was having and realized that I’d actually been prey and so there was that’s that layer for me but also then she talked to us about you know how to keep your heart rate down and keeping your breath the same and

really being consistent in the water not sending off those signals that you’re something that’s worth eating and so in the swim so it happened twice that about you know you get a really good the ocean was washing machine so we’re in a pretty rough night and we’re getting into the night so we’re three and a half hours in and I feel this sort of switch next to me and we’ve got the so you got a kayak and it’s got a a shark shield on the front and back the boats are hundred or two or three hundred meters ahead of you because it attracts sharks and it’s just bobbing away so sharks are sort of around it so it can’t be near you until they feed you then they sort of scoot out come back and feed you and then they take off again so it’s you and the kayak and then you’re out in the dark and it’s just got these few little red lights on the side it’s just you in the middle of the ocean literally in the middle of the Pacific and so

the way those shark shields work obviously it hits them on the nose so the sharks might come in and have a sniff and then if they hit some on the nose they turn around really quickly and go away and you can feel that that switch so I felt the switch I thought oh wow that’s a shark and I stayed really cool but then at about four hours now I know it’s about four hours because I felt was feeling hungry you know you feel you get into that routine of feeling hungry and and there’s this big switch and I thought oh it’s the boat and and I hit the side of the kayak and the kayak has gone oh what was that I look up thinking it’s the boat and the boat’s not there and I’m like oh my god what is next to me in the water here that is big enough to swish me that far across the two meters into the side of the kayak and then I look down and there’s like this box jellyfish that’s avatar blue or something and I thought oh my god and then I but I’m but I

did all those things like I immediately applied don’t be prey and I’d all I had done since I’d seen Angel on that week since just thought about that and my mind was perfect like I literally went back to the rhythm kept my heart rate down and stayed cool and didn’t send off any signals and you know and I survived it’s such a good metaphor for going through life as well don’t you think like it’s just if you can keep that that calmness about you no matter what situations thrown at you yes you’re much better positioned to to deal with it and react in the in the best way possible yeah I like lots a lot about controlling our own minds isn’t it and and particularly in situations that are difficult whether that you know there can be lots of different things and so I have found that very powerful yeah but don’t be prey for me what I liked about it it wasn’t be a predator it wasn’t be aggressive and attack other people it was just

don’t curl up in a ball you know don’t give up don’t you know don’t allow things to happen to you and there’s this great line in the in the movie from Jen Schumacher she says you know how do you make something that’s work for you rather than against you and and so that’s what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to turn you know what might be an enormous negative or appear like an enormous negative to you because it’s always relative we always think those things that may be worse than they are how do you turn that into a net positive and life’s not perfect there’s a lot there’s not black and white so how do you how do you make this the best that you can and that’s that’s worked really well for me for me it’s been life changing from that one comment yeah well and it’s um quite often when I if I reflect back on some of the things in my life that at the time where you know some of the some of the toughest things I’d been

through down the track it’s like yeah I actually could take that learn from it and that’s actually become a positive thing but it can be a challenge to recognize that in the at the time yeah and mostly you know everyone says oh you know it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger all sort of stuff and they’re all nice lines but nobody you know I wish these things had never happened to us and I’m sure for almost everyone else in their life they don’t want those bad things to happen to them and but unfortunately you know that you cannot get through life without trauma so how do you and everyone has their own different trauma so how do you how do you do a better job of managing that trauma and preparing for it and how do you make it so that the holes not so deep you can’t get out of it and I know it ends up at the bottom of that hole it’s a long way out to be four years to get to some level of turning point what was that moment for you when you felt you had made

that that turn I think the um probably the north channel post the north channel um cook straight was also important I felt like at the end of cook straight I remember sitting on the boat and and thinking that that I had sort of been rebuilt and then which meant that Japan which was my my last of the seven and Japan had had one out of four to get across which was Annie Johnson the year before and that doesn’t count because he’s special so you know so basically nobody got across um so nobody normal got across so so effectively it was a hundred percent failure right the year before and so Japan felt much more about the process the event the swim

preparation doing things differently for this particular swim the team dealing with the uncertainty of whether the channel would let you across or not being the last one all those sorts of things so so it’s not a spreadsheet but but certainly at the end of the north channel I think because I was stripped so bare and then didn’t end up back on the burly bench like when I was in Catalina I ended up in a really big hole I got sick from the diesel fumes which is just a rookie era with by me I got really sick but I was also worried about a bunch of things and I ended up spiraling down I literally was begging for a great white to eat me like I just wanted to be gone um and I just would have thought it was a mercy killing but when I got to that sort of level of pain in or beyond that in north channel I didn’t go there I only went to good things wow well in the film so Suguru straight’s the last win and like high spoilers no

spoilers okay I won’t reveal whether or not um you made it I don’t get eaten obviously so uh but um but for me watching yeah you’re watching that just was really quite a really emotional part of the the film and I wouldn’t say I’m I wouldn’t say I’m an easy cry for a for a movie um but I’m also not a tough cry but it’s just like really sort of stirred up um some emotions and I think it gives such a good insight into the actual things that someone like yourself goes through through the ocean seven because I think you know only what is it 36 people have done it so far you’re the 29th and I don’t think you can you can’t grasp the challenges that you that you face and how how difficult it really is but for me that gave me probably the best insight into what what challenges you faced and then also having the team around you and what that feeling’s like yes when you when you get to the end like it to me is like I felt like

I was a bit of a part of that yeah well everybody does so I that’s the beauty of the film you know obviously we didn’t make it so I did the swims and whatever else and we got really lucky we Tim Daniel my coach had been in in a documentary in 2005 2006 that was a Channel 4 which is a UK documentary and that documentary at the time was quite famous called Two Swimmers and the guy that did that that made that film ended up being our editor so he already knew Tim understood channels but he is an Emmy award-winning editor and writer as well so he’s world class and so where they’ve landed this thing is quite astonishing and so it’s you know documentaries don’t go into cinemas anymore but the distributors all want to put it into cinema partly because obviously being part of the ocean and everything else it looks it’s better on cinema you know in that cinema experience but also also because they think that you know that if

it gets the right marketing and the right push that it could be one of the better documentaries that’s been made in a long long time I think they’ve done a beautiful job yeah I absolutely agree and listening to this yeah somebody’s listening to this might think you have to be an extraordinary swimmer to get across these channels but you told a interesting story about a good friend of yours Olympian Michael Klim who gave you some coaching advice yeah so I’m not a very good swimmer so I own and technically you know pretty awful but obviously you build a bunch of skills to get across these swims and so the swimming technique is part of that but Klimmy before the English Channel said to me oh look I really want to help you with your English Channel experience why don’t we do a technical session down at my pool so I went down to an hour and a half training session with him and he said he was going to give me

a couple little tips and we sat down for breakfast and I said so you know what have you got for me said mate so we just need to find some rhythm that was terrible and so when I finished the English Channel you know I was in Dover and the phone rings and it’s Michael and and each you know drills into my head for 45 minutes because the Olympian he wants to know what it was like mentally you know it’s a whole new experience and at the end of it he says he goes well mate he said I just can’t believe a swimmer as bad as you can get across the channel like thank you thank you Michael so but anyway it’s so you know those that’s sort of true actually and I said you know there’s a really good line when when part of the filming process is that you have to bring your kids on that journey and hours at 21 and 23 and the eldest son Lachlan got to watch it an early version and by himself with the film guys because they needed to show him some

stuff that was a bit confronting and and I asked him how would you describe the film he said that’s easy dad ordinary people doing extraordinary things I thought that was such a good line because it’s obviously a lot of other swimmers that are in it as well and so I think that’s sort of a pretty good description of of what it is

you can sort of touch on that but what message would you hope that people take away from watching the film oh there’s there’s a lot of layers to it so I know where people are landing so people are getting to the end of the film and if they’ve been through trauma then they understand the film and they’re applying their own trauma to the experience that’s depicted in the film and it’s the same it’s a metaphor the film the swimming really for that journey so for people with trauma it gives them hope that you know it does end actually it all it does actually end and that you can you can manage that through and then for other people that haven’t necessarily been through really difficult things yet they’re definitely landing at the end of this thing and they’re inspired to go and do something else so they they don’t understand they don’t need to be an Olympian or a national level swimmer or anything else to to do something that can really change their lives that is really interesting and can

can you know help them be a better version of themselves I think that’s a lot of people that have seen this in sort of the focus group things have come out and they’ve gone back running swimming and not only that they’ve they’ve picked something big to do they haven’t just said I’m going to go down they might do some bite size chunks some little ones along the way but they’re thinking about something really big that can take them well outside their comfort zone not just outside their comfort zone and that’s cool yeah and that’s that’s the thing that a really good film or documentary can can do is it can inspire that that change and actually like booking in a big a big swim or a big run or just you know getting getting people to shift course on their life even even a little bit by a few degrees well we go though we gave uh when I was talking to Jeff and Steve and they said what do you want to get out of the film and I said I I want um that someone who’s done the English Channel

is sitting watching this with their family and that and the film ends their family look at them and go oh my god I had no idea now I understand what you’ve done so there’s sort of that and that and that an ocean swimmer can watch it and they can go that’s what we go through that’s that’s what it’s like and and they’ve delivered that it’s very authentic definitely

I think every swimmer every swimmer I know every swimmer is going to love this movie but it’s probably any endurance sport but it’s mostly I think got more appeal to general public everyone who’s sitting there thinking that they can or should go and do something I’m hoping that this once by them to actually go and do something you gotta you gotta live not exist and the film so you’ve got some dates coming up for UK and then Australia do you want to share those yeah yeah sure so in the UK so we’re going to get to the UK first I think and in fact I found out today that we’re going to kick off and folks and where we’re all started so we’re going to kick off where the English Channel finished for me on the 4th of March but we’re doing advanced screenings around the UK so I’m going to go to all those I think this is like a holiday with purpose and and then Q&A and then there’s eventually the proper cinema release

across the UK is on the 20th of March I really wanted to respect Tim Denier and all of the wonderful people in the Red Totsamming Group by being going there first and so that’s where we’re going first and then then that will end and then eventually it’ll do all those things but it takes a fair while to get to streaming other things this is definitely a cinema movie I think and and then Australia is a Gold Coast Film Festival probably from the 22nd of April but then into cinemas in Australia on the 7th of May and then through Asia and then it’s the Northern Hemisphere Festival season so it’s going to take um year and a half two years it’s great fun yeah I bet is it do you feel like this is a

I mean obviously it’s the next project but like this is uh this is the thing that’s really giving you purpose at the moment you know you’ve done the Ocean Seven like is this it’s more um like Jamie from Scotland said the other swims the celebration of all the work that you’ve done this feels like a like a celebration really others it’s just only pure joy in this thing and knowing that it’s so good is really helpful like you’re not gonna I haven’t said anyone come out of there from any walk of life and go that was a bit crap so so it’s so so and you know our boys are 21 23 so they’re no longer at home so we’re really in this unique situation where we can follow it and run with it and see where it takes us and meet and then you get to meet the same people that we got to meet at Gibraltar in Croatia so for you know I can’t tell you how excited I am about you know following this thing around I’m still watching it

but yeah but it’s uh no it’s it’s it’s it’s a really um you know it’s gonna be a really interesting journey and so we don’t we’re turning it like a channel in the sense that we’re prepared for it we’ve done everything we can the movie’s made and now it’ll go where it goes and and it’ll take us where it takes us and we don’t mind where that is we’re very

indifferent to where that lands just let it land where it lands and so but along the way there’s going to be some really really interesting people to meet that’s great well um as I said at the start I really enjoyed the the film I think you’ve done you and everyone who’s worked on it has done such a such a great job firstly showing what you go through on those swims because I I didn’t fully grasp it I don’t I don’t think even though I’m in the swimming world I know a lot of people have done it I didn’t fully grasp it and then also just the well being so open and honest about where you were in that dark hole and then having being able to come out of it and putting yourself through those those swims to you know to really discover

I guess who you truly are like deep down and and being able to come to the other side of it is was very inspiring so certainly moved me there’s nothing quite like knowing that you’ve got it in you and my personal experience from that is is that that’s now resonating across every aspect of my life so my daily disciplines are better my mindset’s better I have this place I go to called my seven oceans soul that um there’s you know there’s a song that takes me there as well that I use and like any triggers I mean I think it helps the bot helps your mind to to get there so it’s a you know if you get that in ripples across every element so you’re better with your friends you’re better with your family you understand how important the team were you love them more you appreciate things more and you don’t let anything that’s you know I mean the noise is gone I just can’t tell you how beautiful it is well I appreciate you

coming all the way down to uh to talk to you and and doing this podcast we’re saying it’s like this is the first actual in person yeah after 400 something episodes sorry no no it’s it’s great it’s like it’s it’s much much better to be able to do it in in person so um yeah appreciate you making the trip and uh we’ll have all the links in the description so people can follow this and uh hopefully get out there and watch the film because it was um yeah amazing an amazing one so thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The post Don’t Be Prey: The 10-Year Battle to Reclaim a Life with Mark Sowerby appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

You can watch someone swim in real time and miss it completely. But slow the video down, frame by frame, and suddenly it’s obvious. Every fast swimmer has this. A lot of slower swimmers don’t.

And when you fix this one timing detail, it doesn’t just make you smoother—it feels like someone just switched the engine on in your stroke.

In today’s episode, I’m going to break down exactly what that timing pattern is, why it matters so much, and most importantly, how you can actually feel it in the water so it shows up in your own swimming.

00:52 Waiting Too Long To Begin The Catch

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That could be costing you five seconds per 100 out possibly more. So for the same fitness, the same effort, with just better timing, you could be swimming five seconds possibly more, even quicker. 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.

There’s a timing pattern that separates fast swimmers from slow swimmers. And you cannot always see it easily when you watch someone swim in real time. But when you slow the video down frame by frame, it’s right there. Every fast swimmer does this, a lot of slow swimmers will miss it. But when you fix this one timing detail, you’ll feel like someone’s turned the engine on in your stroke. So today, I’m going to share with you what it is and how to feel it in the water. So it was about three years ago, I was coaching a clinic in Brisbane. And there was a swimmer there who was a master swimmer. He was 48, was swimming his whole life, very fit. And it was training about five times a week. And he was stuck around the one minute 25 per 100. So fairly quick swimmer, but he couldn’t figure out how to get faster. He’d worked on his body position, he’d worked on his catch, he’d worked on his kick, everything looked fine. But when I

filmed him underwater, we could see it immediately. His catch timing was off by about half a second. And that doesn’t sound like much. But that half a second was costing him around three to four seconds per 100. And so here’s what most swimmers do, they reach forwards, they glide, and then they start the catch. But the problem is, if they wait too long to begin the catch, they end up decelerating and slowing themselves down. And so if you are beginning your catch, once the other hand has already entered, that’s too late. That’s too much of a catch up freestyle. And so you end up losing a lot of the momentum and the speed that you’ve generated from your catch and pull on the previous stroke. And so you speed up and slow down and speed up and slow down. And that just uses a lot more energy. The other problem with that is it makes it harder to get a really good catch if you glide for too long. Because not only have

you lost some of your speed, but you will also find it harder to get into a comfortable position. Because it’s likely that your hand is beginning to catch too high near the surface of the water. So what I said to this from a was, all right, we’re going to focus on this one thing. We want to work on getting the catch to begin a little bit earlier. So you’re not doing too much of a catch up in your freestyle. And he said, okay, I don’t know what that feels like. And I don’t know how to change it. So I showed him that once his hand enters the water, the other arm should have about finished its catch, or it could even be roughly under the shoulder. And so that’s the timing that we say with most middle to long distance swimmers is that as one hand enters, the opposite arm will have finished the catch or even be under the shoulder at that point. That’s where you see most of the top swimmers. And there is a difference there, depending on the style

and the person and all that sort of stuff. But roughly in that range is what we are going for. The other thing I had him do was back off the power. The catch is not the power phase of the stroke. It is the setup phase of the stroke. So when you’re swimming fast, you might go for a five or a six out of 10 in terms of effort through your catch. So we’re not going really light, but we’re definitely not going really hard with it either. So somewhere in that mid range where we’re building up the pressure on the hand and the forearm through there, that is then going to help you get more propulsion through the power phase of the stroke, which is essentially once you finish the catch and your body starts to move past the arm, that is where you generate most of your propulsion and have most of your power. So use the catch as the setup phase and don’t feel like you should be muscling that part of the stroke. So when you watch an Olympic

swimmer in slow motion, you’ll see this timing pattern really clearly there. One hand enters and as it’s extending forwards, the other arm is going underneath their shoulder through that part of the stroke. So by the time the opposite hand has entered, the pulling hand is already anchored in the water and their body is beginning to move past their hand and they’re already generating forward propulsion and this is why they look so smooth and they’re not rushing, they’re not thrashing, they’re connected early and that early connection gives them time to apply pressure through the entire stroke. But a lot of adults will miss this by about half a second to a full second when they’re doing too much of a catch up and that delay cost them the front third of their stroke where they’re having to work on getting going again and getting that speed going again when they could just keep that momentum. So freestyle is very much about rhythm,

rhythm in the stroke, rhythm in the catch and so we want to make sure that we’re timing that correctly. So if you’re swimming around two minutes per hundred and you’re doing too much of a catch up, that could be costing you five seconds per hundred out possibly more. So for the same fitness, the same effort with just better timing, you could be swimming five seconds possibly more even quicker. So how do we fix it? One of my favourite cues is keep the lead hand in motion, meaning that we never want to stop completely with the hand in front because if we stop, we slow down. Now don’t get me wrong, you will take a little bit longer through the reach phase of your stroke. You’re not going to rush into the catch but take a little bit of time as you’re extending forwards but then when you finish the reach and you’re fully extended, then tip the fingers down, bend the elbow out to the side and roll into that catch to keep that momentum and that

way you’ll maintain your speed and you will not find that you’re having to start stop all the time with this full catch up in the stroke. So keep the lead hand in motion even though you’re going to slow it down a little bit through the reach phase and a little bit through the first part of the catch, we never want to stop and glide and be doing nothing there because then you’re playing catch up. And there’s a number of drills that can help with this, some drills like Longdog is one of my favourites, 616 and there’s a few others but it’s very specific about how you do it. You’ve got to do the drill correctly with the timing to make sure that it’s actually going to make the difference in terms of changing that timing from too much catch up to finding the sweet spot. So Tom spent a couple of weeks working on this and every session he focused on getting his hand connected early and rolling into that catch and he filmed himself

every couple of days just to check his timing and after two weeks he tested his pace and he was able to drop from a 125 per hundred down to a 121 per hundred. So four seconds especially at that pace is fairly significant. So the same fitness, same training load, just better timing. When I asked him how it felt, he said it feels like he’s finally got something to press against and that’s exactly what it should feel like. This is what the catch should feel like. Like you have the hand, the forearm pressing against the water, like it feels somewhat thicker or heavier because you have got something to press against. So it’s not pulling through, it’s not pushing, there’s just pressure there and that pressure means connection and that connection means propulsion. So if you feel like you’re working hard but not getting anywhere, the problem could be your catch timing. So maybe you’re pulling but you’re pulling too late and by the time your hand engages

with the water you’ve already lost your momentum and that’s why you might be losing speed. So if you can fix the timing you’ll feel the difference immediately and you’ll feel like you’ve got something to hold on to and you’ll feel like the stroke has traction and your times will drop without trying harder. So here’s what I want you to do, film yourself from the side, above or below water, is fine, see when your hand enters the water and check it compared to your other hand that’s in the water. So let’s say your left hand is just about to enter, where is your right arm and if your right arm is anywhere from the end of your catch to about underneath your shoulders, your timing is probably good but if it’s not in that range and one hand is meeting the other hand out in front that is probably too much catch up and if you’re not sure whether you’re early or late, send me a video and I’ll tell you. So that’s what we do inside

the Effortless Swimming Coaching membership, film yourself, send it in, I’ll watch it and tell you exactly where your timing is off and how to fix it. So there’s no guessing, just clear feedback on what to change. So if you want to help dialing in your catch timing you can join the Coaching Membership at EffortlessSwimming.com and you’ll also get a waterproof camera included with your first month so you can easily see yourself and film yourself and that way you can upload the video, I’ll check it out and tell you exactly when your catch should engage and how to feel it and then when you work on that timing you’ll be able to work on it until it’s automatic and a lot of members start to feel the difference in a couple of weeks time and they start to see the time drop within sometimes four weeks sometimes a bit more a bit less. 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

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I watched a swimmer fix one breathing mistake and drop 12 seconds per 100 meters—not in four months, but in four weeks.

No extra fitness.

That single adjustment took her from 1:48 per 100 down to 1:36 per 100.

In this episode, I break down exactly what she changed, why it worked so fast, and how you can apply the same breathing fix in your very next swim—whether you’re training for endurance, speed, or just want to stop feeling rushed every time you turn your head to breathe.

If your breathing feels like the limiter in your freestyle, this episode will change how you swim.

01:45 Head Lifted Forward Out Of The Water

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So she practiced this for four weeks, so she sent me another video after those four weeks and the difference was dramatic. Her head stayed low, her breathing was clean and relaxed and her hips stayed horizontal. No more swing uphill and her time a minute 36 per 100. 12 seconds faster, same fitness, same training volume, just better breathing mechanics. 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, Renton Ford. I watched her swimmer fix one breathing mistake and dropped 12 seconds per 100 meters in four weeks, not four months, four weeks. She didn’t change her fitness, she didn’t add more training volume, she changed one specific thing about how she breathed and that single change took her from a 148 per 100 to a 136 per 100. I’m going to show you exactly what she changed, why it worked and how you can apply the same fix in your next swim.

This is one of the most common breathing mistakes I seen age group swimmers and triathletes and it’s costing you massive amounts of speed. She came to one of our coaching calls a few months ago and she’d been swimming consistently for over a year, training three times a week and followed a structured program and she was doing everything right, but her times weren’t improving. She was stuck at 148 per 100 and couldn’t figure out why. When she swam, she felt like she was working incredibly hard so her heart rate was high, her breathing was laboured and after 50 meters she already felt quite exhausted. So she asked me, branching on fit, I can run 10Ks, no problem, why am I so exhausted when I swim? So I asked her to send me a video of her swimming at a normal training pace and when I watched it, I saw the problem immediately. Every time she breathed her head would lifted forward out of the water and not to the side. She went forwards with it. So every time her

head lifted forward, her hips dropped and she was literally swimming uphill every single stroke. Now let me explain why this is such a massive problem. Your head weighs about five kilos, roughly the weight of a bowling ball. So when you lift that bowling ball up and you go forwards to breathe before you turn, basic physics takes over. So your head goes up at the front, your hips drop at the back and your body goes from being horizontal to dropping through the hips and the legs. Now instead of swimming through the water, you’re swimming uphill and swimming uphill requires significantly more energy to go the same speed and that’s why she felt exhausted after 50 meters. She wasn’t unfit, she wasn’t necessarily slow either, it was just that she was tiring very quickly and so she was working a lot harder than she needed to. So here’s what made this even worse. When her hips dropped, she created more drag, more surface area pushing against the water

and more resistance. So now you’re not only swimming uphill, you’re also dragging a parachute behind you and to compensate most swimmers will kick harder. They think oh my hips are dropping, I need to kick more to keep them up. So now you’re burning more energy with your legs while you’re trying to fix that problem that your head position created and this has a cascading effect of the one breathing mistake which is just lifting up, lifting the head up high, well above the surface of the water so the hips drop, you create more drag, it’s harder kicking which leads to exhaustion and the solution isn’t to get fitter, the solution is to fix how you breathe. So here’s what I told her to focus on. Firstly I showed her a side by side comparison. On one side, head lifting up, hips dropping, body angled which was her stroke and then the comparison was with an elite swimmer where the head would just turn directly to the side

and the body stays horizontal and once she saw it the difference was obvious. So I gave her three specific corrections to make. The first one is your head should be like an iceberg so this is the key cue. Think of your head like an iceberg where when you’re swimming and you’re looking down 10 to 20 percent of your head should be above the water and when you breathe you turn your head to the side, you don’t lift up or you don’t look forwards first and then turn, you just turn directly to the side. So one goggle stays in the water, the other comes out. Now it’s okay if it comes, that bottom goggle comes out a little bit but for the most part we want almost half the head in the water. If both goggles come out you’re probably lifting or turning too far and that is the mistake. So your head should rotate as part of the body roll staying low and relaxed and not popping up to breathe. The second correction was exhaling underwater mostly through your nose.

A lot of swimmers hold their breath underwater and then they try and exhale everything just as they turn to breathe. This can create panic. So instead what I’d recommend is allow a little bit of an exhale primarily through the nose to happen as your face is in the water and then as you’re turning to get your breath that’s where you can have most of the exhale but by that point your lungs are mostly empty so the inhale is calm, it’s quick and it happens naturally. So allowing a little bit of an exhale primarily through the nose while your face is in the water after you’ve taken a breath is how to do it so there’s no rushing, there’s no gasping. Correction number three so breathing every two or three strokes and learn to breathe on both sides. So a lot of new swimmers actually have a tendency to breathe every four or six strokes and they’re not getting enough air in and for most adult swimmers and triathletes that’s too long between breaths

especially for longer swims. So breathing every two strokes or three strokes helps keep your oxygen levels up and your heart rate under control and being able to breathe on both sides can help with balance of your stroke and it exposes some of the technical faults that often show up when you only breathe to the one side. Now the drill that I gave this swimmer to lock this in it’s side breathing drill with a kickboard. So you hold a kickboard out in front with one arm your other arm is by your side you’ve got fins on and you’re kicking face down in the water and then when you’re ready to breathe you turn the head to the side you rotate a little bit and then you get the breath quickly you get it low and you bring the head back and the board out in front is used for balance and stability so it helps you practice that low quick breath where you’re turning directly to the side and not lifting up and this way your head stays low in the water it’s like an

iceberg and you’re not lifting and throwing the head around. So she practiced this for four weeks so she sent me another video after those four weeks and the difference was dramatic her head stayed low her breathing was clean and relaxed and her hips stayed horizontal no more swimming uphill and her time a minute 36 per 100 12 seconds faster same fitness same training volume just better breathing mechanics and she emailed me afterwards and said I can’t believe this one change made such a difference. Swimming feels completely different now and I’m not exhausted anymore and that’s the power of fixing a fundamental flaw you’re not just getting faster you’re making swimming feel easier because you’re no longer fighting physics so here’s what to do in your next swim firstly film yourself from the side and watch your head when you breathe if both goggles are coming out of the water you’re probably turning too far or

lifting the head so you can practice the side breathing drill with a kickboard 200 meters at the start of each session for two weeks getting used to that way of breathing make sure you breathe every two or three strokes and practice breathing to both sides and the last one is exhale from your nose so your inhale stays calm and controlled that’s okay to have some breath exhale through the mouth as well but primarily through the nose so one breathing mistake can cost you 10 to 15 seconds per 100 that’s 90 seconds over a 1500 meter swim that can be the difference between finishing mid-pack and finishing at the front of your age group and the fix doesn’t require more fitness or more training it requires fixing the mechanics so if you want personalized feedback on your breathing technique join our coaching membership which is where you can send a video of your swimming we’ll analyze it and we’ll give you specific corrections like we did with this

swimmer and we’ll identify a highest leverage technique flaws and tell you exactly how to fix them so you can submit a video once a month get feedback from our coaching team and track your progress over time the link is in the description below but whether or not you join fix your breathing technique stop lifting your head up when you breathe and start rotating to the side keeping mostly one goggle in the water and this change could drop your time by 10 seconds or more per 100 so try it in your next swim and let me know how it goes in the comments thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

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At 20 years old, I missed qualifying for the National Championships by three hundredths of a second in the 50 backstroke. Fast-forward 18 years, and at 38, I qualified for Nationals in the five-kilometer open-water swim—training mostly just three times a week.

In this episode, I’m breaking down exactly how I did it in my late thirties: the one thing an Olympic gold medalist taught me that helped me generate more power with less effort, why getting injured before the race actually worked in my favor, how just five minutes with one coach changed my technique in the final two months, and the single workout I repeated every week that built my endurance and helped me finish fast.

01:54 Missed Out Again

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Two weeks out from the event I ended up injuring my rib so I was playing with my kids in the surf at home and I threw one of them and threw my rib out where it was quite difficult to breathe and I couldn’t rotate to the side and I couldn’t swim for a couple of days but what it meant was I couldn’t really push hard or train as much as I normally would. 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. When I was 20 years old I missed out on qualifying from the national championships by three one hundredths of a second in the 50 backstroke. This year at 38 years of age I managed to qualify in the five kilometer open water event for the national championships and in this video I’m going to share with you how I did it in my late 30s training mostly three times a week. I’m also going to share with you the one thing

I learned from an Olympic gold medalist that helped me increase my power but use less effort while getting injured before the race actually worked to my benefit. How five minutes with one coach helped change my technique in the two months leading up to the event and the one workout we did every single week that I feel like helped increase my endurance and my ability to finish fast. If you’re new here my name is Brenton Ford. I’m a swim coach based in Australia and we work with thousands of different athletes all over the world to help them increase their speed and efficiency for their triathlons and open water swimming. So in my late 10 age years and early 20s I was trying to qualify for the national championships and I just missed out by 0.03 twice in a row and it was something that I felt like in my late 20s early 30s that it was starting to slip away like I was getting too old possibly to be able to hit those qualifying times that

you need because they’re fairly quick and you’re racing against the very best swimmers in Australia of all ages so you’re racing the very best and last year I did a five kilometer swim where I missed out on the qualifying time which was a one hour and four minutes. I missed out by around 37 seconds and I thought oh that’s a long time to start training again but if I dedicate myself to it and make some changes possibly I could get back there and qualify. It wasn’t about actually racing at the nationals because I’m not actually racing at the national competition. I just wanted to prove to myself that it was possible and that this thing that I had in my mind 18 years ago was still something that I could achieve. So in October I was in Thailand we were running our Hell Week camp there and we took some footage of my swimming and I sat down with one of our coaches Tasman who coaches in our membership and she said your head’s quite deep

and when you breathe your right arms very straight really pushes down and I wasn’t getting much of a catch and it was really evident in all of the footage that we took when I wasn’t breathing it was much better but when I was breathing it really locked out at the elbow pushed down on the water and it took a long time to get into a good position and so what I’d worked on for the two months leading up to the event was actually having my head physically higher in the water so changing my gaze where I was looking one to two meters further in front physically having the head higher and I found that that allowed me to get the breath a little bit quicker and that goes against traditional advice of your head down bum up but my body position was fine it was just that my head was too low in the water and it was taking me a little bit longer to get the breath so we’re having it physically higher it was less of a turn I could breathe

quicker and that really helped me get my catch a lot better on that right arm when I was taking a breath I thought in my mind about a cue which was just bend early so as I reached forwards I didn’t want to lock out with the arm I wanted to keep it a little bit shorter so I didn’t overextend and just I just thought about bending or hinging at the elbow a lot sooner in the stroke and my times came down by one to two seconds per hundred as I started to get used to that change but one of the biggest changes that really helped me was my stroke rate I could hold it a little bit higher for less effort when I changed the breathing because I could get the breath quicker and there wasn’t this delay or this hitch in the stroke when I took a breath which was previously a problem and after the how we camp in Thailand we had a Maldives long distance camp where we had the gold medalist from the Paris Olympics come along and join me coaching on that trip

Sharon Van Rivendale and one of the things we worked a lot on with the athletes there was how to use the correct muscles at the correct time in the stroke and one of the main muscles that takes over through the power phase of the stroke is our lats that quite often people are not in the position to be able to use their lats they tend to hunch and they tend around their shoulders and that doesn’t allow them to use their lats through this power phase and that’s often where a lot of shoulder injuries can come from so we did a routine we did some fair band exercises prior to swimming most days where we worked on the sequencing of the catch the pool and the press to make sure that our shoulder was actually in the right position so every time I went to the pool I would go through this couple of minute routine or TheraBand routine that would help engage and activate the lats and work on the sequencing so to make sure that the shoulder

was in the right position and I found that when I did that I could really notice the difference when it came to swing freestyle because as I came underneath here I do have a tendency to hunch a little bit and I found that my lats were starting to use get used a lot more and I didn’t have to actually work as hard to hit the same pace in the same times and so I tribute the last two months of those TheraBand routines to helping get into those stronger muscles through my back and through my shoulder and another thing that really stood out to me on that trip that Sharon mentioned was she said when she was training at that elite level she didn’t really work on the strength through the front of her body she was working all on back and shoulders because when we’re swimming freestyle a lot of it is in this direction and we’re working through the front and so we really have to work on strengthening the back and the shoulders so that we don’t cause that

hunching or rounding of the shoulders and to me that really stood out so I worked a lot on shoulder and back strength particularly with a lot of seated rows and a few other exercises to me that made a big difference with the power and strength I had through the stroke every Friday we did one set that made a huge difference to my fitness and endurance leading up to the event so every Friday we would do a heart rate set which essentially was a best average or VO2 max set so what we started with was 12 100s on two minutes and we would actually go as four best average with one recovery and then we would do 12 100s best average now to me best average is as fast as you can hold for all 12 so we want to be consistent across all 12 so don’t go as fast as you can on the first one and be dead on the last one you’ve got to be consistent across the whole set now we started those 12 100s and built our way up to 20 100s best average on

two minutes and in the lead up to the event I got down to holding around a 108 per 100 in a long course pool so a 50 meter pool and to me that like that was very hard at the start and I could knock those out fairly comfortably after around the eight or nine weeks of building that set up we just increased by one per week and what I noticed when I was racing was I could keep the heart rate fairly comfortable and in the last 400 I could actually build and really push the pace as hard as I wanted to and I didn’t find that I died whereas last year I really blew up in the last three or 400 meters so that to me felt like the best set that I could have done in the lead up to the event two weeks out from the event I ended up injuring my rib so I was playing with my kids in the surf at home and I threw one of them and through my rib out where it was quite difficult to breathe and I couldn’t rotate to the side and I couldn’t swim for a couple of days but

what it meant was I couldn’t really push hard or train as much as I normally would but the advantage of that was I couldn’t train as hard and I couldn’t train as much so I was forced to rest and I was forced to taper and actually recover a bit and what I actually found is on race day I felt really good I felt like I was I was well rested but I still had the fitness from the last couple months of training and it’s something that I’ve often fallen into the trap of which is training too hard too close to a major event and not letting the the body rest and not sleeping in and and getting all those sorts of things that we need to recover and so that forced rest actually worked to my advantage which in hindsight was a blessing but in the lead-up to event I was quite annoyed I felt like that I couldn’t do what was required on race day it was really good conditions it was flat there was very little wind and to me

that was perfect conditions for racing and I went out tried to stick it with the fastest swimmers there’s four or five of them who are quite elite swimmers and I just couldn’t quite match the pace for the first 200 so I ended up dropping a little bit behind them and I couldn’t sit in their draft so I was kind of out of my own for the entire race day I ended up wearing our nano clear strike tinted mirror goggles which stayed clear the whole way so I made the siding really easy especially in those longer distance events where you want to take a straight line it’s really important to be able to see where you’re going and so the nano clear goggles made a huge difference there I could see exactly what I was looking for the whole way through the event and the event was four laps of this course this 1.25 course and what I ended up doing was just staying fairly steady all the way through I didn’t really have anyone to swim with or draft off so I

had to go about at my own pace but I managed to just keep the heart rate and the pace fairly consistent all the way through except for the last 400 where I picked up the pace and just put on the afterburners in the last 200 meters or so and that felt really good I didn’t have to spike I didn’t have to go too hard halfway through which can sometimes cause you to blow up and cause your pace to drop overall and when I finished the event I had no idea what time I had done there was no timing visible I had to wait until the times came through on the app but I ended up swimming a 103.17 which is averaging a 115 and the qualifying time was a 104 so I managed to just scrape in and I was really pleased to hold that 115 I wasn’t sure if it was really possible but that was with no wetsuit in the open water and in pretty good conditions overall and the one thing I’ve noticed a few weeks after qualifying is in terms of racing

confidence just personally that has really increased we had a big swim here in Melbourne called the Peer to Pub and I managed to win the age group and have the second fastest overall time on the day and that was a little bit depending on tide and conditions and a few other things but in terms of confidence sometimes just it takes one little personal win to see that happen down the track in other races and so it’s given me that confidence that all right you can swim reasonably well and you can swim at a pretty good pace and mix it with some of the faster guys and I’m trying to keep that momentum going so I hope you enjoyed this video if you enjoyed it hit the subscribe button and take a look at this next video thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

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Today, we are talking about the 5th and final Core Principle of Fast Freestyle: find your rhythm and timing.

00:36 The Dancing Part Of Freestyle

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In today’s episode, we will be discussing the core principle number four of Fast Freestyle, which is developing an effective catch and pull.

01:40 No Need To Overpower The Catch

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Today, we are talking about the third core principle of Fast freestyle which is Rock, Return And Align.

00:36 Rock v.s. Rolling

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In today’s episode we’re looking at Core Principle Number 2. This principle is all about minimizing drag. Here are the three things that we covered on this principle.

01:46 Proud Posture

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01:45 Use Your Diaphragm

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