Effortless Swimming

In this episode, I’ll share ten ways to increase your swim speed and become a better swimmer. So, let’s dive in and explore these effective strategies.

00:35 Train Another Stroke

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. This is a rebroadcast from one of our most popular episodes from around 12 months ago And that’s a really useful way to be able to sustain your swim speed over longer distances So this has been a real revelation for me in terms of the effort that I’m actually putting in When I’m going at certain speeds and certain paces Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water Become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford Welcome to today’s episode of the effortless swimming podcast on today’s episode I want to talk about 10 ways that you can increase your swim speed some of these ideas You may have heard on the podcast some of them will be new I want to give you a couple of options to improve your swimming and make yourself a better swimmer The first thing is to train another stroke now in this podcast on the videos

I love to talk about freestyle because I coach a lot of triathletes and open water swimmers and primarily they are doing freestyle But it can certainly help to develop and train a different stroke Whether that be backstroke breaststroke or butterfly But I think backstroke for a lot of people is a really good one to just include in some of your sessions in freestyle We tend to train the front of our body a chest our shoulders because of the movements that freestyle requires Backstroke can help open you up through the chest. It tends to work your back and shoulders in a different way Those are posing muscles So backstrokes are really good ones to include as part of your training Whether that be is in some of your recovery efforts during your session great to do some backstroke and just change things up a little bit and The thing about the other strokes is the catch is the same whether it’s fly or back or breast

The catch is essentially the same position just in a different Position in terms of either on your back or with both arms so the catch position is actually the same So if you can improve your catch in a different stroke and you can enhance your feel for the water in a different stroke More times a night that’s going to translate to your freestyle as well So training a different stroke is the first way that you can increase your swim speed The second thing is change the way that you’re training try something new When I was training for the rotten s channel. I was doing a lot of distance work in zone 2 So just that sort of easy aerobic work I was doing a heap of that when I was training and for me I respond really well to long slow distance and When it came to racing, I did a 400 freestyle at a at a competition And I found that I felt like I had a huge aerobic base to draw from and for me that allowed me to

Finish that 400 really really strong. I felt like I had Unlimited energy when I did that did that swim compared to you know When I don’t have that big aerobic base behind me, then I feel like I just can’t race as well So change the way that you train whether that being doing more long slow distance work whether that be doing more specific Sprint work if you’ve seen breadhawk sprint revolution He talks a lot about doing some resistance work talks about doing short sharp fast 25s or 30 meter sprints and Doing that at high at high speed Just changing the way that you’re trying seeing what you respond best to is another good way to find extra speed in your swimming Number three is being diligent with your skills So even if you’re a triathlete and you are mostly racing in the open water It doesn’t hurt to have good skills in the pool skills being the way that you push off the wall Your turns and your finishes. Let’s say you’re a 145 swimmer. You’re always hitting 145. I

Would I would suggest that most? adults could get there 145 down to a 140 or 141 if they applied better skills in Their intervals in their swimming So what would that look like? Well, if you look at the the best ones in the world Typically when they push off the wall, they will have one hand up on the wall And they’ll be facing the wall with both feet up then when they push off They’ll go underneath the water. They’ll push off in a streamlined position on there Partly on their back, but then they’ll row roll onto their side and then eventually onto their front as they break out So they push off a certain way Then when they go through their turns, they make sure they go into the earn with speed so they can come out with speed They push off in a streamlined position. They might do Two or three dolphin kicks off the wall depending on who the swimmer is And so they’ve got good skills into the turn and then when they finish

They they will likely not breathe the last five meters and they’ll have their head down They’ll finish on a full stroke fully outstretched and on their side So making sure you finish well too So they’re the things that I mean by good skills when you’re swimming And if you can just be diligent with those you’ll find that there’s speed available for you And even for me as well I’ve got to remind myself to have those good skills and practice those good skills Because when I was a a teenager growing up we’d have those skills drilled into us But when you don’t have a coach there on deck giving you feedback, it’s easy to forget about them But if you can develop good skills I would suggest that most people could find a couple of seconds per hundred Just by developing and practicing those good seeing those good skills The fourth thing is to become supple a couple of years ago There was a book called becoming a supple leopard and that basically detailed how you can move better

And this is something that we cover a fair bit on the podcast If you listened to last week’s episode with Holly Björkner She talked about a couple of ways to improve your thoracic mobility your shoulder mobility Improving the positions that you can get into in the water Makes a big difference to being able to achieve the optimum technique and and doing that in a way that’s easy So improving your range of motion is an easy one to ignore But it’s something that really really makes a difference If you can do 15 to 20 minutes of some mobility work a couple times a week That goes a long way to helping you get into the right positions in your stroke Number five is joining a squad or joining a group of swimmers that can help push you beyond What you’re comfortable doing. I I think back to When I was in my early 20s I was looking to I was trying to qualify for the olympic trials And so during the uni holidays because I was finishing up university

I went back home trained under my dad’s squad, which was a pool based squad And we were training specifically for Those pool pool comps and pool events and being with that squad and getting the feedback on my times on my technique And training with those with those other swimmers I was able to get really really close to qualifying for olympic trials And I’d say that like the reason I was able to do it was because I trained with the squad If I was trying to do that training solo, I wouldn’t have pushed myself nearly as hard I wouldn’t have been as diligent with with my skills and my breakouts and my stroke And so I think I wouldn’t have got even close if I was doing that training by myself So if you can find either a group of people or even find one other person that you can swim with Occasionally, then you’ll find that you’re going to push yourself a whole lot more than if you’re doing everything solo

Now I’m a big advocate for doing the occasional solo swim as well Because that way there’s no pressure on doing times and you can just focus solely on the effort that you need to do And you can just be hyper aware of your your body and your movements But I think joining a squad or training with a group can really help increase the output that you’re putting in within a session I know for me personally when I’m training with a squad I’ll usually go twice the distance that I’d normally do if I was going solo and and output wise It goes a lot quicker and it goes a lot easier swimming with a group of people

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Just use the code podcast at checkout Check them out at shop.effortlesssuming.com and upgrade your swim with nano clear Number six is to occasionally don’t track anything Don’t use the technology apart from maybe a wall clock to look at your time So taking off the watch maybe taking off your form goggles now and then and just being present in the water When I look back at how I used to train as teenagers as kids The only feedback we got was from that Clock on the wall or from our coach giving us times But everything outside of that was all just about developing our body awareness and our intuition And our feel for the water and I think sometimes it’s easy to get lost or stuck in the data And so it’s it’s great and it can certainly be helpful But if we can just step away from that at times and just enjoy the Being in the water I think that can help a lot of people and when we go away for our Maldives swim camps in September, which we’ve got coming up this September

I usually do a fair bit of swimming with the group and I’m not really tracking much Sometimes I’ll just put the watch on just to see how far we do in some of the swims But more times than not it’s just the enjoying the experience of being In the ocean with other people. There’s fish. There’s stingrays. There’s sharks. There’s lots of sea life around and just being Really present in that moment and just experiencing how much Distance am I getting with this stroke that I’m taking through the water? You know, how’s my speed? How’s my feel and connection just being hyper aware of those things? Things are a really good way to become in tune with how you connect with the water and ultimately how that impacts your speed number seven is keeping calm under pressure by Developing your ability to control your breath So as people start to fatigue or as they start to panic in an open water race They begin to breathe a lot shorter and a lot shallower and then their technique starts to fall apart even more

So they get slower because they’re not only fatigue, but their techniques falling apart so if you can develop your ability to keep calm under pressure by Doing some breath control work as part of your training I find that’s a really useful way to be able to sustain your swim speed over longer distances So a way that we use this in training is doing some breath control something like we’ll do eight fifties on one minute and five seconds as the interval and We’ll do the first 50 breathing every three strokes the second one every five strokes The third one every seven strokes and then the fourth 50 will go every nine strokes So three five seven nine and then we repeat that to make eight fifties Now a lot of people struggle In the seven and particularly in the nine like that’s a bit of a challenge But the better people get at that the more they’re able to relax So usually when people start doing that kind of training

They want to rush through the strokes to make the strokes go faster so they can take a breath sooner But that’s the initial reaction, but you have to go against what you feel like you need to do You actually have to slow things down So you can relax more so that you don’t use as much oxygen And that way you can actually get through it a lot easier So it’s counterintuitive to think all right slow down But that’s when you can actually go through those seven or nine breath controls and not feel like you’re desperate for the next breath So that’s a really good way to train yourself to become calm under pressure He’s doing some breath control work as part of your training And then you start to find that in a set where you’re working Harder and towards the end of it your heart rates up and you’re pushing hard You can be a lot more in control of Of your heart rate and how you’re feeling and then you feel like you’re almost just in third person being able to control your output

And your stroke and it’s almost like you can just sit back and just Change the levers and and move these you know move the needle a little bit here and there To be able to get through this session and hold your times Number eight is to commit to a swim block a lot of triathletes that i’ve worked with Have set aside several weeks to work on their swimming Usually in the off season is a good time to do it But committing to a swim block where maybe you swim one or two more times a week than you’d normally do Maybe you do more distance or more intensity than you’d normally do but having a uh a swim block that might be four to six weeks long and you’re Training a bit like a swimmer where you might be training Four five times maybe six times a week you’re doing more distance that you’d normally do I find that can help you level up in your swimming. So the way I’d think about this would be I’ve gone away on some surf trips before and in those seven days

We’ll often surf three times a day. So I’ll be in the water for probably six hours a day Maybe you know sometimes even more and in those one one week blocks of a surf trip I’ve Leveled up my surfing and I found that that’s improved dramatically because of that consistency In the water the amount of time I’ve had the amount of time I’ve had to to practice different maneuvers And I found that when I’ve come back my surfing is leveled up and swimming’s no different If you can set aside a swim block or even you know go if you go to a swimming camp or a swimming And you know adventure where you’re going twice maybe three times a day You’ll probably come back from that trip having leveled up your swimming and develop a different feel for the water And just it can help fast track some of those things that you might be looking to developing your swimming Number nine is pick one thing and stick to it for three months

So if you changing the thing that you’re thinking about with your technique every week or every session It’s probably too much if you think about the big rocks in your swimming The the main things that are going to help you become a better swimmer If you can focus on that for three months Guaranteed that’s going to become a habit for you And that’s then ultimately going to be something that you don’t have to think too much about So those big rocks in your swimming. What are they? Well head and body positions number one We’ve got to work on reducing drag as the first thing Secondly, we’ve got to make sure that our kick is effective and not slowing us down So maybe working on the effectiveness of your kick is is another thing you could do Your rotation making sure you’re rotating the right amount not too much not too little But being effective with your rotation. So it’s in that 30 to 40 degree range And that you are in control in your balance when you’re rotating

Another one would be a catch and pull. That’s a really big one making sure that you’ve got a good catch You’ve got a good pull through and working on that But just picking one thing and being willing to commit to that For several months and being patient with when you see those results or that payoff Is a great way to become a better swimmer And the last one is to get professional help Helping have someone who’s got experience to actually help you with your swimming Whether that be a coach or whether that be someone that you know who grew up as a swimmer and still swims And they they know the things that are important for for swim speed But getting feedback from someone when we went away to Thailand for our whole week swim camp last year Myself and one of the other coaches Mitchell in the water going through a going through a session And we had one of our other coaches Sam He ran us through that session and he coached us through it. So he was giving me feedback

In in that session and one of the things he picked up was in my 25s in my 50s when we were sprinting My stroke rate was too slow. So he got me to really increase the speed of it coming over the water faster and rating up a lot more than what I was currently doing and My times came down as a result of that and I don’t get that much Feedback when I’m swimming anymore because I swim in a in a group We don’t have a coach on deck But being able to get that feedback on my own stroke made a big difference And I can see the benefit of of getting that now you might not have someone on deck to give you that feedback But if you can record some video of your swimming or you can get a coach to film you and give you an analysis Or if you are inside our effortless swimming membership and you can get some footage every month I do a member’s call and anyone who sends their video through I’ll I’ll give you one or two things to focus on for that month getting some sort of specific feedback

For your swimming that will give you something that’s actually going to make a difference for you That is a another good way to increase your swim speed and whether that be With your technique whether that be with your workouts if you’re doing triathlon Just getting someone to help you along along the way can really fast track a lot of the The mistakes that people make you can skip past that and just cut straight to the chase and looking at those things That will actually help you going forwards So I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of the effortless swimming podcast. My name is brunching forward I’ll see you next week on another episode 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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Imagine holding a 1:05 pace per hundred for nearly two hours—no walls, no turns, just pure precision. Every stroke efficient, every breath controlled. How do you sustain that kind of speed without breaking down? What should your catch feel like? And how do you stay smooth when the ocean, the pack, and your own heartbeat are all working against you?

In this episode, we dive into the story of Nick Sloman. He’s not the biggest guy on the start line, and he wasn’t a childhood prodigy. But over 12 years, he turned sheer efficiency into his competitive edge. After missing Tokyo, he rebuilt himself—not by training harder, but by learning how to swim smarter. His insights on feel for the water might just reshape the way you think about endurance, technique, and what it really takes to go the distance.

01:07 Head position

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Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Imagine holding 105 pace per 100 for almost two hours. No walls, no turns, just precision, every stroke efficient, every breath measured. How do you move that fast, that long, without falling apart? What does your catch need to feel like? How do you stay smooth when the ocean, the pack and your own heartbeat are fighting you? Nick Sloman isn’t the biggest guy in the start line. He wasn’t a child prodigy but through 12 years of work he turned efficiency into his edge earning his place at Paris 2024. After missing Tokyo he rebuilt not by swimming harder but by learning how to swim smarter and the way he talks about feeling the water might just change how you think about endurance and technique forever. Hi, I’m Nick Sloman, five-time Australian open water champ,

five-time world championship representative, also six-time surf race champion as well. Something that I’m really trying to work on at the moment, I know Craig’s really anal about my head position. I struggle with trying to keep it down because in the open water I’m always constantly looking up and so my head position is generally fairly neutral. I’m always trying to look down at the tee or at the sand in open water. It might not always be like that. Under fatigue I generally look up a little bit but I’ve been trying to try and obviously relax the traps and try and keep my head as neutral as possible. I know I want to try and keep my legs as boring as possible so for me trying to suck my my hips up a little bit almost like ass to the sky when I and sort of chest down that way I can sort of stay on top of the water because in open water you you’re trying to almost be how fast can you swim slow essentially and that allows you to

swim long distances easily but also just trying to stay on top of the water is where you want to be. A kick for me is more about balance. I know historically I’ve had a quite a strong kick. I’ve been really trying on limiting the kick for longevity of my career as well as trying to have that change of gear and that last sort of 1000. So for me it’s it’s a soft sort of three beat I would say. I’ve been working on trying that the one beat so one kick per stroke and and obviously when I’m picking up the pace it’s it’s going to be quite frequent six beat kick. That’s what I’ve been trying to do sort of the last sort of six months. I’ve really been trying to focus on efficiency. I know Singapore was was one to sort of really highlight my inefficiency when it came to my heart rate and and stuff in comparison to everyone else so I’ve been really trying to work on trying to limit that kick try and swim as fast as I have been but with less propulsion from the legs.

It’s pretty stable like it’s it’s to the left I know it’s a it’s probably not the greatest habit to get into but just see if I can reach out on my right arm and get purchase on that. I find that I’m a little bit more balanced and if frequency of breath is very important for swimming long distances every two years. I’ve been working recently on trying to get pressure on the outside of my hand. I know that I have a tendency to kind of push out on my stroke so that’s something that I’ve sort of thought about is getting the pressure on my outside of my hand and almost pulling across myself because I want that cross body connection. Obviously I’m a smaller guy so I want to be able to use my whole body rather than just my arms and legs to get as fast as I can so that outside of the hand will allow me to kind of pull across and use my other hip to. Hey real quick in case you didn’t know we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives,

Thailand, Japan with Sundays, Galapagos Islands plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is I’m not that quick will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps so as long as you can swim a kilometer there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening let’s get back to the podcast. Get purchased on the water. When I was a junior there wasn’t much technical expertise it was more how hard can you go for as long as you can. Now that I’m obviously moving with Craig

we’re analyzing it a little bit more and just trying to find that one percent.

Obviously when I was younger I’d look at videos and look at

champions when watching them on TV and just trying to almost copy them and almost have a habit of almost picking up what they’re doing and their bad habits almost. So over the years I’ve kind of just almost trying to find my own technique and what works best for me and finding little cues like the outside of the hand and that one beat kick and just trying to find as much efficiency as I can essentially. I’m quite high typically over a 10K I’ll sit at 40 strokes a minute towards the end maybe up towards 50 typically sitting around that 41 42 right on average. My head position is probably one that Craig’s most anal about. In open water it probably doesn’t matter too much because you’re constantly looking up to sight but in pool you’ve almost got to be perfect or as close to perfect as you can and that head position allows my arse to get up and have a better body position so that is what I’m when I’m in the pool is probably what I’m focusing on the

most. The rule that I kind of work against is when I’m heading into the chop I want to rate up with my my arms and then when I’m going with it I want to rate up with my legs. Typically that’s worked best for me. Higher rates I know I can get in a better rhythm even though it may be inconsistent chop or anything like that I can find a little bit more balance with a higher rating. When I’m going with it I can relax a little bit more and conserve in that way but I also want to lift up my back end so that I’m actually catching those runs. I would say once every 10 strokes it would also change on the length of swim as well and how many people are around me. If it’s a large pack and I’ve got guys either side of me it’d be less and maybe in a relay it’d be even once every three or four strokes because the line is very important you don’t want to be swimming too far off course when time is of the essence so I guess it just depends on

on the the distance and and what I’m trying to achieve. Again it depends on what I’m trying to achieve. If I’m quite fatigued and I know the people around me are in a better position then I’m probably going to stick to the hip try and slow them down but if I want to conserve as much energy then I might drop to the feet so they can swim a bit quicker and again it it just depends on what I’m trying to achieve.

Earlier on in my career I was averaging close to 80k a week it’s a little bit less now it’s probably around 70 70k a week. In Hungary I got close to 100k and half of that was other strokes it’s just the Hungarian training regime they just love doing obviously different strokes with different muscle groups and stuff like that and it was probably the most mentally taxing period of my career but I learned a lot from that from an endurance perspective and there’s a reason why they’re the best in the world. It’s like a a make or break situation.

I quite like the more challenging sets I just feel like from a mental perspective I feel like I’ve achieved something so I always liked doing the 31s even though like it was extremely tough the 31s on 140 just best average as much as like in the moment I’m probably hating myself but I just feel like I can get the most out of that from an endurance perspective probably more so now that the set I did this morning was two three hundreds paddles pull buoy just relaxing A2 and then off the back of that 400 best effort and we do that maybe four or five times I try to hold under a minute if I can on my best days I can hold 57 58 and then on my bad days it’d probably be around that one minute 101. Of late I’ve really been trying to hit out more heart rate zone rather than a pace so with my sort of zone two work anywhere between 130 to 140 beats per minute maybe like a 108 107 my strength is really in that 170 to 180 zone

where I can sort of hit down to that 101 102 pace historically I’ve been able to hold that for pretty much all day and then anywhere in the red zone would be anything under a minute uh yeah it’s um I think it’s a an in thought set that’s where we did nine four hundreds we start on five and we drop 10 seconds each time and they do it in sets of three so we’ll go five minutes for 50 for 40 back up to 450 and then for 40 for 30 then go back up to 440 for 30 for 20 and the idea of that is to start at a one a two a three and then a two a three threshold a three threshold the o2 max and by the end of the set I’m hitting close to four minutes I would typically start at an a one maybe like a a 440 like 110 pace and then it will be dropping maybe five to 10 seconds each 400 the couple in in recent years um swimming in the in the sand in paris was one of the toughest um for its own like environmental reasons like it we were swimming against a current that was

over one meter per second so it was good while you were going with it but when you came back into it there was only really one spot where you could sit and it it was very physically demanding another one would be Singapore just just went um we were in temperatures outside of like 36 degrees plus and in the water it would have been over 32 degrees on average um I ended up being over 180 beats per minute for one and a half hours so that was tough physically um I left that almost on a stretcher there’s been many races where I’ve been pulled out and and taken to hospital it’s almost one of those things that I sort of don’t know when to stop um I yeah just find a whole another level of of you know focus and in can push myself past what’s physically capable of myself and yeah those races really spring spring to mind with with physicality and and also like mental fortitude as well um you kind of get to halfway and you think oh

shit am I am I gonna do it or or whatnot and yeah those those races of recent times have been extremely tough uh I guess it’s just um what my old coach JR used to instill in me is is discipline like you rest when you’re dead essentially mentality and and it was all those sort of work that I did leading into it I didn’t really want it to go to waste so you know there was 11 years where I didn’t really take a break bigger than two weeks and that was forced because of hotel quarantine so it those times sort of spring in the back of my head and basically tell me not to give up and just to keep going 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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If you’re someone who avoids flip turns—or you’re completely out of breath every time you try one—chances are, it’s not your fitness holding you back. It’s your technique. In this episode, I’m breaking down a simple, step-by-step method to help you master the tumble turn, so you can actually save energy on your turns, move faster off the wall, and keep up with the swimmers beside you.

By the end, you’ll know exactly how to execute a smooth, controlled flip turn without getting dizzy, without gasping for air, and with way more rhythm and confidence. Let’s dive in.

00:48 Approach The Wall Smoothly

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

Most swimmers either avoid flip turns or they are completely out of breath after they do one. If that’s you, it is not your fitness, it is your technique. In this video, I’m going to share with you the simple step by step method that you can learn to do a tumble turn or a flip turn. And that way you can actually save energy on the turns. You can be a lot faster in them. And you can also keep up with the people next to you who are doing those flip turns and coming off with more speed and more rhythm. So let’s get stuck into this video where you’re going to learn exactly how to do a flip turn without being out of breath or feeling dizzy at the end of it. The first step is to approach the wall smoothly. At the bottom of each lane, there is often a black T and that thing is to show you where you are from the wall. And you can use that to help gauge how far you are from the wall. Now, if your pool doesn’t have it, you’re

probably going to have to look slightly forwards to see how far you are from the wall. But most pools are going to have these teas and they’re usually the same distance out from the wall every single time so that you can reliably know how far away you are as you are approaching the wall. So each turn is going to be the same, no matter which pool you are swimming in. Now, when you come into the wall, we don’t want to slow down as we’re going into it because a rule of thumb that you might hear from coaches all the time is that the faster you go into the wall, the faster you’ll come out of the wall. And that is certainly true once you get good at doing flip turns. So we want to keep our speed constant and smooth as we go into the wall and approach it. So once you’ve found your distance from the wall, the second step is to set yourself up on the last stroke. Now, this is where a lot of mistakes often get made. And if you’ve struggled to do turns well or do

them comfortably, this might be where you are doing something that’s causing your tumble turns to either lose their rhythm or to run out of breath. Now, in this set up stroke as we go into the wall, we want to head into the wall, take our last stroke, and we’re coming into the wall with one hand in front. And that last stroke is going to pull towards your hips. And that’s going to help bring you into the wall to initiate the flick. Now, the mistake that people make here is as they’re coming into the wall, they don’t take that last stroke and keep the hands at the hip. They actually go one hand in front, the other hand comes in front to meet it. And then they try and pull themselves in with both hands. But it’s got to be the opposite. Both hands have to be at the hips as you are beginning to flip over. So our last stroke is this setup stroke, where we come in with one hand by the side, and then we pull ourselves into the wall. And this

last hand is going to finish at the hip. And that way that’s going to help us with our flip and mean that we can get straight into a streamline position. Now, one thing that you might have trouble with there is seeing exactly where the wall is. If you are struggling to see the wall as you’re swimming in because your goggles are really foggy, check out our Nano clear anti fog goggles. These goggles have anti fog that’s built into the lens. And they last 10 times longer than most anti fog on the market. And so these are goggles that we’ve developed over the last six months so that you don’t have to worry about fog anytime that you’re swimming. Now after the setup stroke, we want to initiate the flip into the wall or the tumble into the wall. Now to do that, we need to tuck our chin to our chest. We need to bring our knees close to our chest and our heels close to our bum because the smaller the tighter we can get

here, the faster we’re going to be able to flip over. So again, another mistake that people quite often make here is that they don’t tuck up tight enough and so it’s really hard to get over the water. Another thing that can help you there is as you’re going into the wall, as you tuck your chin, you need to almost press your chest down into the water to help initiate that flip. Sometimes people find it hard to flip directly over so they almost sort of rather than going over it in a straight line, their body turns to the side and that’s where they get messed up. So you need to feel like you’re almost somewhat bearing your head or your chest down into the water to help initiate it. So if you’re finding it hard to do that in a direct motion, make sure that you’re really pressing down the head, the chest and tuck that nice and tight. So that way when we land on the wall, we want to land with both feet almost together. Now what we

don’t want to do is when we do that flip, we don’t want to flip onto our stomach and be facing down into the water ready to push off. We want to flip over, land almost on our back but we’re actually going to turn slightly to the side. So our feet will be about 45 degrees here as we’re ready to push off and you’re going to be mostly on your back, a little bit on your side, you are not going to be on your front at this point. Now this is important because if you flip over and you try and do the turn onto your front through that motion, it’s going to take you twice as long. It’s going to cause you to lose your rhythm and you’re probably going to get a little bit dizzy in this process. But instead if you can flip over direct, land feet on the wall, put a little bit of a turn to the side and then you’re ready to push off, the next part becomes a whole lot easier. Now it’s important to make sure that you land the right

distance away from the wall. Now a lot of people when they’re first learning this, most people tend to turn too close to the wall. So when their feet hit the wall, they’re either struggling to get their feet underneath themselves or they just completely slip off when they when they push off the wall. So think about it as almost like you’re crouching on a skateboard. You’re not going to get really, really low but you’re not going to be too far away. We’re just kind of crouching down on a skateboard and our legs are a little bit, a little bit more bend than 90 degrees. Okay, so we’re not too far away. We’re not too close but a little bit, I guess, less angle than 90 degrees with your legs as you can see here in this, in this shot. Now we also don’t want to land too far away where your legs are almost straight and it does take several times of practice to get this length or distance away from the wall right but once you get it, if you can embed

that feeling and if you can remember exactly where you’re turning in relation to that T on the bottom of the pool, that way it starts to become a habit and it’s automatic. So you don’t have to keep thinking about that as you are going through the next six to 12 months of diswimming. Now once your feet have hit the wall, you’ve turned them a little bit, we also need to make sure that our hands go into streamline and because we’re going from hands that were at the hips and the body slipped over, the hands are almost in that position ready to streamline. So the last step there is we want to get one hand on top of the other, wrap that top thumb around your hand like that and then we want to lock that in. Try and lock the elbows in here, covering the back of your ears and that way when we push off we’re straight from our fingers all the way through to almost our hips and then we can push off and the more streamlined

we are, the faster we’re going to go at that point. Now a mistake a lot of people make here is that when they push off they look forwards, they break that streamline by trying to look ahead at where they’re going but that is going to slow you down by probably more than 50 percent if you push off in that way. So we need to make sure we’re locked in everything straight from fingers through to our hips as we then push off the wall and that is how you can keep your speed off the wall. Now if you are finding that you’re getting quite tired through this this motion it might be because you’re not locking in that streamline, you might be pushing off like this and even though it doesn’t look like much of a change that creates so much more drag and so when you push off it feels like you’re hitting a brick wall and you’re going to slow yourself down so much. Now if you’re tight through the shoulders and you can’t quite get

into a really good streamline get into as good a streamline as possible and that way you’re going to save yourself possibly half a second or even maybe a second on every single lap that you’re doing these turns. Now as you are pushing off the wall we are then going to push off and as you’re coming off we’re going to start to turn onto our front. So by the time you go to take your first stroke we want to be eyes down into the water so we’re facing down ready to take that first stroke. So most of the turn is happening as we are coming off the wall and that again takes a bit of practice to figure out how do I need to move and hold my body as I’m coming off the wall but if you can do that well then it is going to save you several seconds it’s going to save you a lot of energy and it means that you’re going to keep your speed coming off the turn because the fastest point in any race in any lap that you’re doing is either off

the dive or off the wall and we want to try and maintain that speed as long as we can into those first couple of strokes but if you’re pushing off creating a heap of drag then you’re starting from a very slow position and then it’s it’s hard to work getting that speed going. So if you’re getting frustrated that the person next to you is smashing you off every single turn doing the turn in this way can actually help you sometimes save one two three seconds per hundred if your turns are really slowing you down right now. Now if you are a junior swimmer or a teenager you’re probably getting taught to do at least two or three underwater dolphin kicks off every single turn and I think for junior swimmers that is something that is worth practicing. If you’re an adult like the people that I teach and I coach you probably don’t have the flexibility and the speed in your kick to get much speed off your underwater dolphin kicks so I don’t

mind if you are a triathlete I don’t mind if you come straight off without doing any dolphin kicks underwater but what I would suggest is push off you might do a couple of freestyle kicks as you’re going into your first stroke but we’re not trying to put a lot of effort into those kicks and we’re not trying to really do a lot of kicks and staying underwater for as long as we can you’re probably better off just pushing off and almost breaking out straight away because let’s say you don’t have a great streamline say a bit tighter than that let’s say you don’t have a great kick you’re probably going to save the most time and the most speed by coming up fairly quickly but obviously that advice is going to change depending on what you’re training for I was listening to a podcast with Bob Bowman who is Michael Phelps’s coach and they really really worked on those underwaters because if you’ve got a great dolphin kick it can be

the fastest way that you can travel through the water faster than your above-water swimming in flying freestyle so just depends who you are but I think for a triathlete just come off the wall break out fairly quickly so you can just get back into swimming which is probably going to be the fastest way to travel through the water for you now as we break out we don’t want to take our stroke while we’re really deep in the water because then you’re going to find that you get stuck and you lose your speed so try and gauge your depth as you’re about to come near the surface as you’re about to pop out that is when you can take your first stroke so that in that first stroke you are just coming out of the water and you’re breaking the surface there now some common mistakes to avoid when you are doing a flip turn the first one is rushing into it and trying to speed up as you go into the wall and just losing your rhythm in your timing

so we want to try and keep the speed that we go in and the speed that we go out we want to keep that quite smooth the second mistake is over rotating or twisting onto your side as you’re flipping we want to go directly into the wall flip over land almost on our back with a little bit of a turn instead of trying to get your body onto its front by the time your feet hit the wall the third mistake is when you push off the wall not pushing off straights or even going slightly down into the water a lot of people will push off and either go straight upwards or they’ll go down too deep so it’s about finding the right angle so that when you take that first stroke that you’re just breaking the surface of the water and the fourth mistake is starting your first stroke too deep into the water so that you lose all of your speed we need to make sure that first stroke happens just as you’re about to break the surface of the water so what mindset can you take

into your foot turns well firstly it’s not about trying to rush things in the speed it’s about keeping things smooth and keeping the rhythm of your stroke as you go into the wall the next part is it is about technique and maintaining streamline so we don’t need to muscle our way through the turn or really try and force ourselves through these movements if we do them smoothly and we get very compact when we turn and we push off in a great streamline that is where the speed itself is going to come from not from trying to muscle or force any of these movements the smoothness and good technique will carry you a lot further than trying to force a lot of these things and the last one is it does take practice so don’t worry if you’re getting water up your nose if you are slipping off the wall if you’re misjudging the distance when you come into the wall all of this stuff takes practice and if you don’t go through those parts where you feel like

you might be failing or you’re like oh this I just I’m never going to get it if you’re not going through that then you’re probably not doing the things you need to do to become very good and very efficient at foot turns it’s just part of the process in learning whether it’s a six-year-old kid trying to learn foot turns or an adult trying to learn foot turns we all go through the same things and we all experience the same challenges so if you can find yourself on the other side of that then perhaps in two weeks or three weeks time you might find yourself starting to get very good at flip turns and it makes swimming in a pool particularly a shorter pool like a 25-yard or a 25-meter pool it makes it so much more enjoyable when you can do these flip turns well and do them comfortably when you don’t have to think much about it and it is possible it’s a learned skill so there’s no reason why you can’t make this a part of your stroke

that is just something you don’t have to think about I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of freestyle foot turns if you’d like to grab a pair of our nano clear goggles click the link below in the description and if you would like the full breakdown of freestyle technique you can click and watch this video right here

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Struggling with your arm dropping whenever you take a breath in freestyle? You’re not alone—and there are five common reasons this happens. In this episode, we break down each cause, show you exactly how to fix them, and help you transform your breathing technique. By the end, you’ll swim farther with less effort and finally feel like you have all the time in the world to take a smooth, controlled breath. Dive in and level up your freestyle.

00:38 Breathing

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

If you find that when you’re swimming freestyle and your arm drops down when you go to take a breath, there’s five main reasons why I find that happens. In this video, I’m going to break down what those five reasons are, how you can fix them, so that by the end of this video, you can swim a lot further for less effort, and you feel like you’ve got all the time in the world to get your breath every time you’re taking a breath is just swimming your freestyle. First thing that I will often look at is the breathing. How are they breathing? Now, the two main mistakes that people make here that causes that lead arm to drop is they’ll lift their head up while above the water. And that sort of comes from that they end up pressing downwards on the water to lift their head up above the water. And, and then obviously, you’re not going to be able to get into that good catch position. So we need to make sure you’re not lifting the head up while

above the water. And we need to make sure you’re looking in the right position. And the right position is straight to the side. So if I’m working with someone, I might get them to look at the lane rope or the side of the pool and try and look there once you’ve turned your head to the side to breathe, because sometimes people will look too far behind them or too far in front. And it really just throws their alignment out. And if you think of swimming freestyle and breathing, I like the analogy of imagining like you got like a skewer through your spine and through your neck. And your head is a bit of meat on that skewer. And when you go to breathe, you’re just turning the skewer, but it stays aligned on that skewer. So you turn to the side and coming back, you’re not shifting your head way off to the side. Now with some elites, and as I see the head come off the side a bit, but generally just try and keep it mostly centered because that’s going to keep

you better aligned. So we’ve got to check the breathing first and foremost. Now the other thing that can help there too is you want to try and keep part of that bottom goggle in the water when we turn to the side. But the other thing is where your mouth is when you breathe. So last week, I was working with someone who’s in our stroke analysis membership. And we looked at his breathing and his breathing was like a gasp for air. It was like open mouth, really sort of upper chest breathing. Now what I have got him to do is to just almost like reach around with his mouth off to the side and try and just make it more of a controlled or a steady inhale instead of this big gasp for air because that’s going to cause you to it makes it difficult to stay calm and relaxed when you’re breathing if you do it that way. So we need to make sure we’re breathing the right way. So first thing is just breathing. If you have trouble

with that, you can do a couple of simple drills like in the first week of our eight week faster freestyle course, we work on some sink down drills just to relax. But if you’re looking to just get that breathing position right, side breathing drill with a kickboard is probably your best bet. So if you put some fins on, hold a kickboard out in front and you can just practice that skewer like approach to breathing to the side. Now it’s OK if when you first start that you find it difficult and you can’t really keep that bottom goggle in. If you need to turn that little bit further, that’s OK. But just over time, you’ll get more comfortable with it until you can get that split vision that we’re looking for.

Hey, real quick, in case you didn’t know, we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan with Sundays, Galapagos Islands, plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world, then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is I’m not that quick. Will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps. So as long as you can swim a kilometre, there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure, just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening. Let’s get back to the podcast. Now, the other thing that we then look at is the rotation through the shoulders.

So overrotations are fairly common problem that I see, particularly on the breathing side. So if we’re looking front on it, someone swinging towards us, you’ll see that for the most part, you know, most good consumers are 30 to 40 degrees through the shoulders if you measure that shoulder rotation at its furthest point. Now, if you’re going past that and if you’re particularly going to 90 degrees through the shoulders, it’s very hard to keep that lead arm in front because of the pressure it can put on your rotator calf, the pressure it can put on the shoulder there. So a lot of people struggle to keep their lead arm in front if they’re going to 90 degrees. So we just want to check how far you’re rotating through the shoulders as you turn to the side to breathe. Now, often that over rotation is a result of the head turning too far or lifting, but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes people will just want to rotate more than what they actually need

to. So that’s the second thing we want to check in with. And if you are going too far, then what you can do there is just work on reducing that rotation. And like I mentioned in the video last week about how to swim relaxed, one of the things that can help you just get the right amount of rotation is think of rotating your torso, think of rotating it forwards instead of side to side. Because like Karl and Pipe said that we want to be rocking side to side and not rolling side to side. And I think when you think of that as rotating forwards instead of side to side, that’s what that’s a way that can help you do that. The third thing that can lead to that lead arm dropping when you breathe is actually the entry of the hand and of the arm into the water. And again, working with a different swimmer in our stroke analysis coaching last week, I had a look at his entry and he was coming over and landing elbow first. And when you’re basically

landing elbow first, it means that you’ve essentially fully extended and reach forwards above the water. So by the time you go to get the hand in, you end up pressing straight down because you’ve got nowhere else to go. It’s very hard to then continue reaching forwards in the water, which is what we want to happen when you’ve done that above. So what we want to work on changing there is making sure you into fingertips first, elbow up, and then you slide the hand forwards in the water out in front of the shoulder before you start to catch. Because if you if you don’t, if you are going elbow first and the hand is just landing in last, you’ll find that that’s that hand, that arm just wants to go straight down to the bottom of the pool. So that’s another one we’ve got to check in with. And another simple drill you can do there with fins and a kickboard is just entry drill. So holding the kickboard out in front, get that hand to come in

fingers first, and that kickboard is going to force you to enter early enough so you go fingers first because if you overreach, your hand is going to hit the top of the kickboard. And you’re not going to be able to get that sliding forwards of the hand in the water. So another really simple drill that you can use to check in with that. The fourth thing I check in with here is the exit of the opposite hand. So let’s say you breathe to the left and it’s your right hand that’s reaching forwards. We want to have a look at what’s happening with this left hand as it’s finishing the last part of the pool or the press phase of the stroke. Because a lot of people tend to finish too short there. They come out before their hip. And if you’re doing that, then you’re not going to get that last bit of propulsion at the back part of your stroke that helps you reach and rotate forwards. So sometimes one of the causes of people not being able

to get that lead arm reaching forwards is they’ve just got no propulsion at the back to be able to actually get it. Because if you don’t have it there, it’s coming out short and you tend to just fall down, collapse on it a little bit. So we need to make sure that the hand is number one pressing back past the hip. So just past the hip. And number two, make sure the palm of the hand is facing behind you nearly all the way back past the hip. Because another common thing we see there is this palm of the hand ends up turning into the body and it’s sort of the hands almost slicing or cutting throughout the back. So again just missing out on that propulsion there. Because that press back past the hip works hand in hand with that reach forward and extension out there. And then that’s where you get that nice lengthening through the body and through the shoulders. So we’ve got to check the exit. The last thing that I will often check here is what’s happening

with that arm as it’s going forwards. We want to look at the what we call the starting catch position where we want to have this very slight downwards angle and primarily looking for is the wrist dropped as they’re reaching forward. So sometimes if people are reaching forwards this wrist is is dropped there like that and that elbows drop down then it doesn’t really lead to being able to continue reaching forwards because with a dropped elbow dropped wrist that arm just wants to go straight down. So I’ve got to make sure that our lead arm is in the right position and in the right shape. And so that’s having the fingers below the wrist, wrist below the elbow in a very slight downwards angle there. Because if it’s the opposite with the elbow lower than the wrist, wrist lower than the fingers then it’s it’s very hard to continue reaching forwards there in the correct way. So we want to make sure that’s happening. Now just as a

side note as a bit of a bonus there the other thing we can sort of look at is where is this shoulder as you’re reaching forward. So with good freestyle as you’ll see this shoulder is somewhere up near the cheek. Not on the cheek but near the cheek. So it ends up staying up there through that reach phase. Now with the students who are new to the sport sometimes we find that that just is dropped down. It’s not near the cheek. It ends up being well below it and again it’s just it’s one of those finer details that’s worth checking in with. So there’s a drill you can do something like shoulder to cheek scoop drill which you may have seen on our other videos before where this will encourage you to or force you basically to keep that shoulder up near the cheek as you’re going through this catch motion. Now in that drill that shoulder is probably a bit too close to the cheek. You wouldn’t actually want to keep it that close but it’s a great way just to get a feel

for that rough position that we’re trying to get into. So if you follow that checklist you can see whether or not you’re doing each those things and that can help you keep that lead arm out in front. Now the very final thing you could do here let’s say you just didn’t want to you didn’t want to go through any of that and just like what’s the what’s the quick fix or what’s a way that I could get this sorted without having to think too much about it. Well if if you want to just try something you know quickly one of the things that’s worked with a few of the swimmers that I work with is just really think of holding the glide or reaching forwards for about twice as long as what they expect. So exaggerating that reach out in front or that glide out in front. Now for example I’m thinking of one of the swimmers that I coach online when he sends me videos we were having trouble with him getting getting a good catch he was just sort

of that arm was dropping down he was too straight with the arm and he was always going too deep so what he had to do was exaggerate how long he felt like he was reaching forwards for by about twice as much so I said to him okay next next video that you send me I want you to exaggerate it to the point where you think this is way too much this is way too too much glide out in front and just send it and we’ll see what happens and when he did that it was the right amount and his timing was actually a lot better the catch was a lot better and then over the course of about three or four weeks he was able to to basically fix it and it’s so much better now so that’s kind of like the quick fix approach won’t work for everyone but for some swimmers we found that that to basically just fix it pretty quickly so a couple of ways that you can go about it I know this is a longer video but sometimes these things require a bit more detail than others

so hope you enjoyed the video and if you do enjoy this stuff check out the effortless swim membership there’s 14 days free have a look at the eight week faster freestyle course inside there because that is what most of our members are going through at the moment and we’re getting some really good results there so thanks for watching please like and subscribe and share this with anyone you know who’s trying to improve their swimming and I’ll be back with another video next week thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The post Why Your Arm Drops When You Breathe appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

There are so many different things you can do to get faster in your freestyle. In this episode, I’m gonna break down five proven ways that you can swim faster for less effort. Let’s get into it.

00:26 Point Your Toes Inwards (42% Faster)

2:07 Don’t Pat A Cat

3:19 Press On Your Chest To Bring The Hips Up

4:24 Reach And Extension

7:15 Increasing Your Distance Per Stroke

8:41 Accelerate Through Each Stroke

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Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. There are so many different things you can do to get faster in your freestyle. In this video, I’m going to break down five proven ways that you can swim faster for less effort. Let’s get into it. Number one, there’s a big shift towards doing a lot of resistance training in the pool. Whether that be with a parachute, whether that be with weights and being able to swim and apply more power and build your strength that way. Now, the thing is there’s a lot of swimmers who are already doing that that don’t even know about it. This is the very common mistake that I see where people are pointing their toes to the bottom of the pool. They have found that you can actually increase your frontal drag by 42% when your toes are pointing to the bottom

of the pool instead of pointing behind you. So that small amount of surface area on the top of your foot, if that is facing the oncoming water as you’re swimming, that is like having a parachute out behind you. It creates a huge amount of drag. If you can point your toes and turn them slightly inwards, a little bit like pigeon toad, that’s going to reduce the drag and that is going to help you sit higher in the water overall. Because when your toes are pointing straight down, it increases a drag. It drops your hips and drops your legs. So you can generally improve your body position in a pretty big way by just pointing your toes. Now, the key to doing this well is you’ve got to keep your foot and your leg most relaxed. It should be this nice flick of the foot that happens at the bottom of the kick. If you’re very stiff and rigid while you’re pointing them, you’re probably going to cramp in your calf or in your foot

and it’s not going to be comfortable. So the trick is finding that sweet spot between pointing your toes but also keeping them relaxed and floppy and that’s what will allow you to be effective with that part of the stroke. So you can reduce a lot of drag by pointing your toes. And I had a swimmer email me last week who said he made this one change and he was already swimming three seconds faster, each hundred. The second one is don’t pat a cat. One of the really common things we see with people when they go through their catch in that first movement of the stroke, they do it like they’re patting a cat. They are moving their hand like this through the water where their fingers stay pointing forwards. A good catch, so that first part of the stroke, that will have you pointing your fingers down to the bottom of the pool. And the two things that I want swimmers to do when they’re going through their catches, point your fingers to the bottom of the pool

and bend or hinge at the elbow to set up a good catch position, which will explain in a different video which I’ll link to at the top of this one. Now, when you do that, you’re going to have a much bigger surface area and a much bigger paddle to push back against the water and that’s what moves you forwards. If your fingers remain pointing forwards through the catch, it doesn’t give you much propulsion at all. It’s primarily going to push your chest and your head up but probably drop the back half of your body. So you need to remember to point those fingers down to the bottom of the pool after you finish reaching forwards out in front. And I think it’s a really good cue to help you improve the catch. Tip the fingers, bend at the elbow. The third one, a lot of swimmers that we work with initially when they come to us, they have very low hips and very low legs and there’s a number of different ways to bring that up,

which I’ll link to a video above here. One of the key things though is making sure you hold and you press your body in the right way. Your lungs have air and that’s where your buoyancy comes from. So you can press on your chest. You can lean on that a little bit and use some core engagement and hip engagement to help bring the hips up. It’s a very subtle change in press of the chest to help bring the back half up. But that’s a really important way that can help manipulate your body so that the hips and the legs do rise in the water. So if you’ve got those three touch points of head, hips and heels at the surface then you’re going to be sitting very efficiently in the water but not a lot of people are doing that. So that’s a really quick win that it can take some time to get the balance of it and to get it right. But when you do that is going to make you so much faster for what’s going to be a lot less effort. Number four, quite often we’ll see people

when they’re coming over the top of the water in their recovery when they go to enter they think that they need to reach out and stretch out as far as they possibly can before they enter the water. The thing is for most swimmers and most elite swimmers they’re going to enter the water first with their fingers then they’re going to stretch out and reach forwards once they’re in the water. So the reach and extension should primarily happen in the water that last five or 10% should be in the water. So if you can learn to enter fingers first with your elbow up and then extend forwards in the water so you’re reaching to not a hundred percent of your capable reach where you go as far as you possibly can but you’re not far off it then that’s going to help you get this nice glide and momentum in the stroke especially if you’re swimming at a very sort of comfortable pace where you’re looking to swim at like a six or a seven

or eight out of 10 then if you can enter that way and extend in the water you’ll feel this momentum that you get when you come over the top of the water and you get to carry that momentum into the water and out in front and that’s where you see this really nice tempo that really good swimmers get where they’re going left arm, right arm, left arm, right arm as opposed to like a hamster in a wheel that’s just going the spinning where you’ll see that often happen when people come over and they reach out but they haven’t entered yet and then they’ve got nowhere to go so they pull straight through and it’s like this hamster in a wheel where you’re not really going anywhere so that’s why we like to teach people to typically enter fingers first with a slightly bent elbow and then straighten the arm underneath the surface of the water and if you’ve done our five day catch challenge that’s the very first thing that we work on

is that entry there and we’ve got several drills in that course that show you how to do that if you’re tired of your goggles fogging up mid swim and having to stop, spit or rinse them every couple of laps our brand new Nano Clear anti-fog goggles are going to make your day we’ve just released three new styles all with a wider field of view so they’re perfect for open water swimmers and triathletes each style comes with a different level of tint depending on where you swim my personal favorite the mirrored Nano Clear strike goggles they’re super clear, great visibility and they just feel fast what makes a difference is the Nano Clear technology it’s anti-fog that’s built into the lens not coated on top so at last dramatically longer than anything you’ve used before you get consistent clarity without the baby shampoo routine and we’re finally shipping locally from both Australia and the US which means faster delivery

and free shipping on orders over $99 and because you’re listening here you can get 15% off your first order just use the code podcast at checkout check them out at shop.effortlesswimming.com and upgrade your swim with Nano Clear number five I was at my kids swim lesson yesterday and he was doing his lesson and in the other pool I was watching some of the lap swimmers go about their laps and one of the things that really stood out to me as I was watching most of these swimmers is that they were swimming very short and by short I mean when they would enter the water they would reach out but not reach out very far when they would push back they’d push back and come out before the hip so they weren’t pushing back very far either so they were swimming short swimming like they were two meters instead of two and a half meters if you go from fingers to toes so a really good way to increase your speed is to increase your distance per stroke

and one way to increase that is to enter the water reach out in front like you’re reaching for the wall in front of you and then pull through as opposed to enter reach up a little bit but move that arm down really quickly so it’s great to be long when we swim I like to think of freestyle as having a base or a start position and that start position is full extension on the side one arm is pressing back past the hip like you can see here that is a really good starting position and then you’d move over to the next stroke same thing that’s your start position if you can be long in that position you’re probably going to increase how far you travel with each stroke and that’s going to increase your speed now one more bonus thing is to accelerate through each stroke when it comes to swimming freestyle it should be slow to fast not all at the one speed so if you can learn to go through the first part of your stroke when you’re reaching forwards

and beginning your catch that part is relatively soft and relaxed then you’re going to gradually increase your speed and your power as you go through it and that means the hand in the arm should accelerate through the stroke again nothing crazy don’t need to go 0 to 100 but it should be this nice gradual buildup each stroke that you’re taking like you can see here and if you can get that sort of timing and rhythm with the movement of your hand and your arm then you’re going to feel that propulsion each stroke as opposed to if you’re just moving everything through at the same speed in the same time you’ll never really get that propulsion you’ll never really feel it and if you’d like to improve your swimming and work closer with me jump into our effortless swimming membership where I’m working with people in there who are triathletes open water swimmers and recreational swimmers to develop better freestyle technique and build their fitness

and build their overall efficiency in the stroke and we’ve got a step-by-step plan inside the effortless swimming membership to help you do just that thanks for watching see you next week thanks for listening to the effortless swimming podcast if you’d like us to help you become a faster more efficient swimmer go to www.effortlesswimming.com

The post 5 Freestyle Fixes That Actually Work appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

If you’re taking 50 strokes a lap but should be in the low 40s, the issue might be your body connection — not your strength. In this episode, we explore how elite swimmer Becca Mann fixed her “shoulders and hips not connected” problem, dropped her stroke count by nearly 20%, and became a record-breaking open-water athlete.

You’ll learn what shoulder-to-hip connection really means, how to tell if you’re disconnected, and the simple posture cues and drills (like 6-1-6 and side-kick rotation) that instantly improve your distance per stroke.

A quick, practical guide to swimming farther and faster with less effort.

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

You’re taking 50 strokes a lap. You should be taking somewhere in the low 40s. The problem is that your shoulders aren’t connected to your hips. That is what Beckerman’s coach told her when she moved across to North Baltimore Aquatic. Now Beckerman was the promising up and coming American athlete and already one of the fastest in the country, yet she had this issue with a stroke where her shoulders and her hips weren’t connected. Now, what does that mean? And how was she able to eventually get to the point where she was consistently swimming 41 strokes per lap every single time? And how did she go on to become a record breaking marathon swimmer and a two time national champion in the 10 kilometer open water event? I’ve been reading Beckerman’s book recently outside the lanes and some of these anecdotes that she makes from the in the book I’ve found really interesting. And that in particular with her hips not connecting

to her shoulders. Hey, real quick, in case you didn’t know, we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan with Sundays, Galapagos Islands, plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world, then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is I’m not that quick. Will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps. So as long as you can swim a kilometer, there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure, just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening. Let’s get back to the podcast. Now, the thing with Becker is she was already very

experienced. So as soon as her coach told her that, she said, hang on a minute, let me get in the water and practice what I think you are trying to tell me. And she said, pretty much straight away, she was able to make that connection from her hips to her shoulders. But what does that mean? And how can you do it? And how can you know whether or not it’s a mistake that you need to address? Now, the way that I say it when I’m coaching swimmers in clinics is that people who are disconnected from their top half to their bottom half, often their stroke timing is out. And the way that they connect through the midsection is not done correctly. So how we can firstly make sure that we are connected from hips to shoulders, we need to firstly think of good posture. So we’re building the frame of our body. So we get length through here. And then think about trying to squeeze into a tight pair of jeans, like may have heard from Andy Donaldson in one of our videos.

Think about squeezing into a tight pair of jeans where you suck your tummy in, you squeeze your butt cheeks together. That will give you this tautness through here. That way, when we’re rotating around the spine, our hips and shoulders can go together because we need the frame of our body to be working as one unit. If we’re disconnected, then usually the hips will stay too flat and the shoulders are just moving around. But we need to get everything working together. The other result of that is when that’s disconnected, quite often people will come into the water and pull through straight away. What they won’t do is reach forwards, extend out and delay that catch a little bit until this arm gets to here and then pull through. So we need to make sure the stroke timing is a little bit slower in front and a little bit quicker in the back. Now, if you are not sure whether or not this is something that you might need to

address, it’s the way that you can know it is if you feel like you get very little purchase on the water when you’re going through your catch and if you feel like you’re windmilling through the water, there’s a very good chance that things are disconnected. And I had a swimmer that I used to coach several years back. When he first came to me, we could see that he’d come into the water and he would just pull straight away. And so his arm was moving separately to the rest of his body. It was completely out of whack in terms of the timing. And part of that was because his shoulders were just rotating on their own and they were completely separate from his from his lower half. And so a way that you can build up on that is doing something like six one six drill where you’re kicking on the side and then when you bring your arm over and you swap sides, you make sure that your hips, your shoulders are going together as you rotate.

And then we can start to build up from that and we work on that connection through that drill. Or another drill is arms by side, kicking with fins on face down the water and we just rotate in the body around the spine and we’re working on that connection from hips to shoulders. And when you get that right, you will notice that you get a lot further with each stroke because with Becker to go from 50 strokes a lap down to 41 strokes a lap. That means that she is increasing her distance per stroke by almost 20 percent. And that is a huge amount. That’s probably another was another 20 centimetres or so from every single stroke that she’s taking because she’s getting more propulsion because things are better connected through the stroke. And so that is why we want that connection to happen. And there are a lot of swimmers out there that don’t have that connection. So it’s something that I think is worth identifying. Some people can just make that

change straight away once they know the issue. Some people need a few more drills to build up to work. So if you’re not sure exactly what to work on, check out our freestyle checklist, which is a you can get free below. And that’s got the order of the stroke to work through and exactly what to work on at what point in the stroke if you’re not too sure. So check that out below. If you like this video, make sure you like and subscribe and I’ll see you next week in another effortless swimming 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.effortlessswimming.com.

The post Reduce Your Stroke Count From 50 To 40 Strokes appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

If you’ve ever been confused about the different types of freestyle kicks — two-beat, four-beat, and six-beat — this episode is for you. I’ll break down what each kick pattern means, how to do them correctly, and when to use each one in your own freestyle to improve efficiency, rhythm, and speed in the water.

some of the best Ironman athletes, depending on the, on the pace they're going. Some of them do have a light six-peak kick. Um, some of them are doing less than that. So it just depends on the person. But if you can get yourself to the point where you can change gears by changing your kick type, then you'll find that it gives you a lot more options going forwards. 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.

If you are confused between the different types of kicking, two-beat, four-beat and six-beat, I'm going to explain what each of those things mean, how you can do them and when to use them in your own freestyle. What the beach refers to is how many kicks you do per stroke cycle. And a stroke cycle is a right arm and a left arm. That is one stroke cycle. A two-beat kick is when you do one kick per arm stroke. So it's kick on the right arm, kick on the left arm. That would be a two-beat kick. And this is a really good way to start as a beginner. It's the most efficient kick because you're kicking the least and it's a really good way to help with the timing of your stroke as well. And you'll often find a lot of longer distance swimmers will use a two-beat kick because it can save energy. And when you've got the buoyancy of saltwater or a wetsuit, you find that you don't need to kick much at all. And so a two-beat can be the preferred style for a lot of people. Now with a two-beat kick, the way we want to think about it is with the upper part of your legs, so your, where your thigh bones are, that's not going to move a whole lot, but the lower part of our legs are going to go from one side onto the next. So we're going side to side like this. What we're not doing is staying flat and just moving our legs up and down. We're going to be on our side and our legs will be slightly apart and then we'll kick and that'll switch us to the other side.

So we go from one to the next. Now, if you think about timing your kick with a two-beat as when your left hand enters, your right foot's going to press down and that's going to help you switch onto the other side. And then as your right hand comes in, your left leg is going to kick down as you switch. So you can think about kicking yourself or pressing yourself into that streamlined position. So we're not trying to do this big massive kick where we're trying to really propel ourselves forwards, but it's this switch from side to side that gives us this grounding point, this sort of point in the stroke where it gives us a bit of propulsion because it feels like we've got something to almost anchor against. So that's the importance of the kick. So that's a, that's a two-beat kick. Now we often find in this, this type of kick that some people will actually need to bend their knee a little bit more than what they would for the others. Just to help them get that switch happening, which is okay. As long as they don't kick too big where the legs are coming way outside the body line and creating a lot of drag. So that's a two-beat kick, very efficient, great for open water. Great for people who aren't too concerned about the speed that they're going, but they want to conserve energy and they want to time their stroke really well. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water. We're here to help you swim faster, smoother, and with more confidence.

And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming HydroClear Anti-Fog Goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day. And I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a HydroClear Goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time, HydroClear super hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself. Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting. And the result? Consistently clear vision, swim after swim. And the durability? Our lenses are CNAS certified. Tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth, under a 200 gram load, the lens stays fog free. No gimmicks, just serious performance that lasts. Using them as simple. Just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog free swim. Ready to see the difference yourself? Get 15% off your first pair of HydroClear anti-fog goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlessswimming.com. That's 15% off your first pair of goggles with the code

podcast at shop.effortlessswimming.com. We also have a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try HydroClear today and experience clear vision from start to finish.

Now a four beat kick is when we do four kicks for each arm stroke, for each arm cycle. Except what I find a lot of swimmers tend to do with the four beat is they go one, two, three, four. But the way we want to time our four beat kick is actually different. It's one kick on one stroke and three kicks on the other stroke. So it's one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, not one, two, one, two. I see a lot of swimmers doing this two, two, when they come for video analysis, but I find it often limits their ability to get faster with that two, two. So the way we generally want to work on this two, this four beat kick is one kick on one stroke, three on the next. Now that means you'll have this little bit of a pause or a delay after that one, and that's kind of where you'll get the glide and the distance in your stroke, as you can see in this video here, takes a little bit to get the timing, but what I like to think in my mind is it's one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. So having that tempo in the back of your mind. Another way you can kind of think of that timing is you can go one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, same thing, just different way of thinking about it, but those two types of ways of thinking about it can actually help you get that sort of tempo and timing, but that does take a little bit

of practice for most swimmers I've worked with it, it's taking them two or three sessions of dedicated practice to get that sort of timing. And that's kind of an in-between level of kick. It's still very efficient, but it does allow you to start to increase the pace. And if you look at some of the best distance swimmers in the world, many of them will do a two-beat kick for their 1500, but as they start to ramp it up in the last three, 400 meters, that'll introduce more of a four-beat kick when they want to pick up the pace that little bit. So it can often use a little bit more energy, but it can come along with increased speed. A six-beat kick is three kicks per arm stroke. And that is more of a continuous kick. You'll see this all the time with sprinters, with even people doing 400 and 800 meters who are used to that sort of kick level of kick. But, and you'll also see in the 1500, sometimes where they're finishing off the last 50 or 100 with a strong six-beat kick, it can use a little bit more energy, but it can also be efficient and easy to do if you keep the kicks light enough of, but more times than not, we will see this with your average adults when they're looking to increase the pace. So it's good to develop these different gears in your swimming so that you can change speeds. But a six-beat kick, you will feel like it is just a constant kick that doesn't have any pauses or interruptions to it, but that can come with a higher heart rate. But it's not to say that you can't maintain that for an entire Ironman swim.

If you look at some of the best Ironman athletes, depending on the pace they're going, some of them do have a light six-beat kick. And some of them are doing less than that. So it just depends on the person. But if you can get yourself to the point where you can change gears by changing your kick type, then you'll find that it gives you a lot more options going forwards. And it's probably not something for beginners, but if you are around that 145 per hundred for one kilometer or faster, it's something that you may want to consider developing as part of your stroke and you're going to be doing so many laps in training anyway, you're going to be doing some variances in speed that it's a good thing to at least attempt and see what works best for you. And it may be that you don't actually need to go to a six-beat kick. It might be that for whatever you're doing, two beat is absolutely fine. And that's all you need. And so you might want to stick with it, but at least give yourself the option to be able to change gears by changing your kick type and something that does take time to develop if you are new to the sport, if you're looking to develop your swimming, you can work directly with myself and our other coaches in our coaching membership. So if you can get footage of your swimming, I'll put the link below to join our coaching membership. And that's the best way to work directly with me to help make yourself faster and improve your own technique. Thanks for watching. If you want to see another video on freestyle, check out this one here. 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 Which Freestyle Kick Is Best? with Brenton Ford appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Two years ago, Brian Hans was swimming 2:00 per 100 yards—struggling to find rhythm and wondering if he’d ever feel smooth in the water. Fast forward to now, he’s cruising under 1:30s and just placed 9th out of 171 in his Half Ironman swim. How did he make that kind of jump? What changes in his stroke made the biggest difference? And what nearly stopped him along the way? In this episode, Brian shares the breakthroughs, setbacks, and lessons from his two-year transformation—proving what’s possible when you combine patience, feedback, and the right focus in training.

Thanks to you and your really helpful video analysis, I started to kind of go from 210 to two down to 150, this is per hundred yards, down to 145. And I think when I was right around that pace, you said the next kind of breakthrough for you is gonna be connection, right? So you gotta hit, you gotta kick while you're catching on the same side and you gotta feel that connection and feel like, have the water help you move. Don't move against the water, like use it to your advantage to just kind of glide. And you gave me that skating analogy. You know, like one catch side, one catch kick, just skate to the other side. I think that was another one of those sort of moments where once I practiced that and got it down, that was another sort of like five, six second jump. 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. Two years ago, Brian Harns was swimming two minutes per hundred yards, struggling to find rhythm and wondering if he'd ever feel smooth in the water. Fast forward to now, he's cruising under 130s and just placed ninth out of 171 in his recent half Ironman swim. How did he make that kind of jump? What changes in his stroke made the biggest difference?

And what nearly stopped him along the way? In this episode, Brian shares the breakthroughs, setbacks and lessons from his two-year transformation, proving what's possible when you combine patience, feedback and the right focus in training. Welcome to the podcast. Just for those that are listening, if you can give it like a quick background on yourself and your swimming and your triathlon background as well. Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me, Brenton, great. Great to be here. I'm a regular listener to the podcast, so it's an honor to be on. I think you guys are doing amazing things at Effortless Swimming. It's an incredible platform that you've built and you guys are incredible at helping adult swimmers get comfortable and kind of distilling things down into digestible terms. So it's really, really great to be here. Yeah, so just a little bit of background. I swam just kind of recreationally growing up. Like I wasn't a competitive swimmer, just a little bit. I played a lot of sports and then wound up, when I was in high school, middle school and high school just kind of started to focus more on wrestling and that was my thing in high school. So I did that mostly, but I also ran and I played baseball. So definitely played a lot of sports and like I said, just kind of swam recreationally, but wasn't a competitive swimmer. And then after college and went to law school, I was kind of looking for something to keep that competitive atmosphere going and I picked up running. So I did a lot of half marathons and marathons and that was fun. I was like for someone who had a demanding job and I was like a decent runner for half marathon.

Like I could keep like a 715 pace for a half marathon. So it was pretty good. And then my older brother got into triathlon and he was like, hey, you should get a bike and try this, this is amazing.

So I did, I started biking a little bit and I started hitting the pool a little bit. I did a sprint race and that was it. I was just like totally hooked. I was a fairly decent cyclist and pretty good runner like having a kind of running background, but the pool and the swim, I was like so uncomfortable. Like everything, the race atmosphere and the open water and just being able to sustain because I had never really swam competitively, but I was okay. I could kind of just put together a decent enough swim to get myself in a position to be in the mix somewhat on the bike and the run, but it just became a focus where I wanted to get, I just wanted to feel more comfortable, basically swimming. So like around that time, I was probably, like a 210 per a hundred yard pace, like somewhere around that, but not particularly relaxed, like feeling that was like working when it shouldn't have been, because I was pretty good running shape. So I just started to kind of watch some YouTube videos and about technique. And I realized it wasn't about, there's a kind of thing like you talk about where, more effort doesn't equal more results. Like I was starting to go to the pool a little more and it just wasn't translating into better results. So I started to watch a few YouTube videos and pick up a little technique. And I was there one day and I remember,

I forget exactly what it was, but it was either something about like head position or body position. I was trying it for a while. And then one day, like it just clicked, the actual like technique and I felt it. And then that was it. I've just been completely obsessed with swimming since that moment. And it's not like at that moment, I just all of a sudden was, as good a swimmer as I've become over the years, but it was just enough to bring me back. And then I just completely fell in love with,

how highly technical it is swimming and that like tension between, needing to put in the time and how fit you can get swimming. But at the same time, just the mental side where you have to be putting in like smart work, not just more work. And yeah, so ever since then, I've just been just going at it as much as I can. Because when I speak to people, it's like they love the run, they love the ride. Their swim is often the thing that they want to avoid because it's not fun and it's not enjoyable. So that moment there, is that the one that kind of converted you to enjoying the swim more than the other legs? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, once I feel like I hear people talk about golf a lot like this, like they hit one shot that just like takes them, just like makes them fall in love with it and brings them back. And like that, yeah, that was it for me. Just feeling that moment where that technique just like clicked into place and then just like seeing the difference in pace and feeling how you're supposed to be moving through the water. Yeah, then I just started kind of prioritizing swimming over biking and running. And it just became by far my favorite of the three, for sure. And then take me back to about two years ago, I think when you sent your first video in for analysis, what made you decide, all right, I think I need a little bit of help here. Yeah, I just kind of realized that I wasn't gonna figure it out myself. You know what I mean? And I was talking, there was a guy at the pool

who I kind of watched. We were equal and we were pretty friendly, like really nice guy. He did tries, like a local try guy. And we would talk at the pool and I started seeing him, we were pretty equal. And then I started seeing him all of a sudden and I was like, man, I can't keep up with this guy anymore. You know, and then all of a sudden he's like hitting flip turns and like dolphin kicking underneath the water and just like, I mean, literally just lapping me. So I asked him like, what's going on? And he said, oh yeah, he said, I started doing online tutorial. Like I started watching videos and I sent in to do a video analysis and just like completely changed my stroke. Like I never realized everything I was doing wrong. So I was like, oh, you know, let me give it a shot. So that was what prompted me to send you that first video. And can you remember back to that first one, what were the main couple of things that you got out of that first analysis? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think you were pretty kind to me. I think you went pretty easy on me because there was a lot, but it was just the basics. It was just head position, body position. I think I was over rotating, which was causing my legs to kind of splay out. But it was mostly just like the fundamentals because I never, you know, even though I love it, I didn't like grow up as a swimmer. So I just didn't have a good sort of like base foundation. So like I said, I think you talked to me about like head position, not over rotating, like lighter kick and just kind of like feeling the water, you know, kind of like skating through the water,

not muscling your way through the water. So I think those were the sort of first kind of cues that you gave me that were super helpful. And then we've obviously done more videos over the last two years. Was there any particular piece of advice or a moment where you were swimming one day and you made a change and you noticed like, oh, okay, this feels just as good as that first kind of breakthrough you had when you changed that initial part of your technique a couple of years back?

Yeah, I think it was, so I started to, you know, thanks to you and your really helpful video analysis, I started to kind of, you know, go from 210 to two down to 150, this is, you know, per hundred yards, down to 145. And I think when I was right around that pace, you said, you know, the next kind of breakthrough for you is gonna be connection, right? So you gotta hit, you gotta kick while you're catching on the same side. And you gotta feel that connection and feel like, have the water help you move, don't move against the water, like use it to your advantage to just kind of glide. And you gave me that skating analogy, you know, like one catch side, one catch kick, just skate to the other side. I think that was another one of those sort of moments where once I practiced that and got it down, that was another sort of like five, six second jump. And then I think the biggest one, you know, more recently was, was breathing. So, you know, just sort of breathing position, breathing technique. I think I was coming up out of the water a lot, which I just, at the pool, I kind of see and kind of notice a lot of people doing that now, ever since you pointed out to me. So you gave me that cue, that like, like goggles split, you know, like where the water should be sort of one, you know, one goggle underneath, one goggle over. So the top of your head is kind of pressing into the water. And that was total game changer,

because that took so much of that, so much of the effort out of the wrong part of the stroke and put it into the right part of the stroke. Like there was no more, like there's no more effort to breathe. Now it's just like waiting for the, you know, catch hand to be at the right spot to like put the pressure on. So that was, that was another just kind of cue. That was a total game changer. And what I really like about seeing your progression over the last two years as well is the, you haven't been in a rush to like, all right, I need to be 20 seconds quicker by the next month. It's like, you know, two years, it's a long time, but it's also a short amount of time. And typically it's people who are willing to just focus on one or two things for several months, make those changes, like your head and body positions and really basic stuff, but a lot of people just don't have that in place. And that's why I went easy on you, so to speak. It's like, well, there's no point trying to like give you everything. Let's just keep it super simple and get that right. And then we can reassess and go from there. And now, so your most recent triathlon, most recent race that you did, it was a 32.50 for your half Ironman swim, where you got ninth out of 171 in your age group for the swim. One of the things you mentioned in your email a few weeks back was you allowed yourself to get a little bit scrappy in that race. Can you talk a little bit about what that means for you? Yeah, and, you know, first of all, I think like, you know, testament to you and everything you guys are doing there.

Two years ago, when I, you know, really was enjoying swimming and thinking like, I'll just try to get better and just see what happens. Like I enjoy that sort of technical challenge. If you told me I would have like a top 10, division swim at an Ironman branded event, I would have told you you're completely out of your mind. So that was, you know, that was pretty cool. And I think, you know, as I mentioned to you in the email too, you know, I think I didn't really seed myself appropriately. I should have probably put myself up a little further because I was kind of climbing over people for most of the swim. So I'm gonna take that with me. And like you always talk about, you know, you can't be a victim out there in the open water. And I think I had a little bit of that syndrome in the seeding. Like I sort of just seeded more appropriately. So I'm gonna remember that for next time. But yeah, so in terms of like the scrappiness, I guess like what I met was, there was a really like a pretty good chop in the water. But it was kind of like, it was a wind driven chop, right? So right underneath the surface was just like nice clean water. So I couldn't, you couldn't do your normal, like easy kind of feeling fluid split goggle, like breathing like you can in the pool. So I had to kind of just figure out like how am I gonna keep my catch, you know, the way that I want it to be, like it is in the pool because I got this nice clean water. But every time I went up for a breath the first couple strokes, I was just like eating water. So I just had to kind of like figure out with elbows in my face and kind of heels, like almost, you know, hitting me in the goggles, just kind of, I skipped the breath about, you know, a couple of times,

just was whatever, hopefully I could get some air on the next one, you know, and then just would breathe like a little bit behind, a little bit in front, like coming up a little bit more maybe than you would if you were trying to execute really good technique in the pool. So basically just trying to like make sure that the basic mechanics were down that I know work, but just figuring out like how to get the breath and just how to get around people. And one other thing that was really helpful was I think I did like a pretty good job of, and I heard you talk about this in one of your podcasts, I forget who was on, but talking about trying to get like a feel of what's around you when you're in the open water, somebody's on my left. And as we're kind of stroking together, I'm trying to get a sense, is that a heel? Is that their catch? Like, is that their arm? And then as soon as I figure it out, I can figure out kind of without breaking my stroke, figure out how to navigate it around, right? There was one guy we were together for like a bunch of it. And then I realized I was gonna like just turn it up a little. And I realized that it was his, it was his catch that I was feeling, right? So I figured after I feel the elbow like kind of slide through, I'm just gonna slide like right over that shoulder and just like get in front of them. So, you know, things like that, just kind of figure it out on the fly. Hmm, so that the awareness in the open waters is such a big one. And we had our Maldives camp last week, two weeks ago. And so we had Sharon Van Rivendel there who was the Olympic 10K champ. And it was really good hearing her talk about the awareness in open water is one of the first things.

And we did a lot of exercises with the group where we'd be drafting, I might be in front and then we'd have three, three, three, and we'd all have to work together in this group. And then we'd kind of do it as like, all right, let's all try and swim at the same pace. And, you know, if you find yourself dropping off or you've got to make sure that you're not out by yourself because you're gonna be having to break all of that water in front of you. So you've got to make sure that you have that awareness, right, where's the group or is there someone nearby that I can slip in behind or get on their hip and just get back up with the group. And especially in an Ironman race where you're going to have hundreds of people spread out. Well, you've got lots of opportunities to slip in behind and then slip past them and kind of use that to your advantage. And then in terms of the scrappiness with the stroke, you wanna be in flow with the ocean. You wanna adapt your stroke to the conditions that you've got. And quite often the surface of the water is not pretty. And so your stroke's probably not going to look that pretty as well. And you have to be willing to get a little bit, yeah, a bit scrappy with it. And often that sort of one-two timing, like one stroke's longer than the other, often that works pretty well in those choppy conditions, especially if you normally breathe to the one side. So just allowing yourself to get scrappy. I'm glad it worked well because I find people usually start off by trying to be too perfect in the open water, especially when they're working so hard on swimming well in the pool, but then they just don't adapt for the open water. So is that something that you feel like you've developed over time or you were generally pretty good at it when you started?

No, I think it's not, yeah, I think it's something you just develop by just doing more races, just doing more open water swimming. So I think this was my, this was my seventh, seventh 70.3. And then I've done one full Ironman and like a bunch of sprints in the Olympics. And I think just the experience, you know, like going out there and knowing like at first, and then this is something that I think actually is, you could work on the pool that I worked on is, you have to be able to really like put a burst on and like feel pretty uncomfortable for 50 meters and then be able to settle back down, right? And just like calm back down, get into your normal stroke or like one race, I swam like right into the buoy. Just, you know, that'll, that'll kind of throw you out like for a loop, you know, you're like, I'm like right under it. And then, so you need to, you know, you get kind of disoriented, you got to, you know, get your stuff together mentally again. But yeah, I think, I think it kind of just comes with experience. Yeah. And it's, yeah, you, I mean, you've progressed a lot in those, in those two years being around two minutes plus to, just under 130 per hundred yards in a lot of your training sessions. And a good question to ask is, how much swimming are you actually doing? Because I know with us, we focus a lot on the technical side of things, but you've got to marry that up with training consistently and putting in the, in the case still. So what's your standard week look like in terms of how many sessions and how many kilometers or miles are you doing? Yeah. So, so yeah, as we've talked about, I have a young family and I work a lot. So if I could, I'd be at the pool,

you know, five days a week, every week, but that's not, that's not realistic. So usually, usually I hit the pool three days a week and I do a 4K session. So, you know, usually around 12. And then if it's a good week, I'll do a fourth. And then over the winter, I like to kind of throw in some longer sessions just if I can on the weekend, like I'll go do like a five or 6K swim in the pool if I can, if I have time, just to try to, you know, ramp it up a little bit. But that's usually, that's like pretty, pretty typical. Three, three or four swims a week and kind of minimum 4K per session. And what's a typical session look like in terms of structure and then like, what are some types of, say, main sets that you've found to be really beneficial, especially for your racing? Yeah. So I like to, I like to switch it up. Sometimes I'll do, you know, just open with like a straight 1K, just straight. And then, you know, the next K, do sort of hundreds on, you know, 150 or two minutes

and just mix in some, mix in some drills. So I'll do, so I'll do like a warmup and sometimes I'll mix in drills to the main set as well. So I'll do like 50 drill or a hundred drill. And then after that, like with no rest. So like take, you know, fins come off, snorkel comes off and then you're right in and do like either two or 300. So I'll do that, you know, for six or seven reps as like a main set. So I usually, I usually keep it pretty varied. And, you know, the hardest set, one that I don't like, but I think is really beneficial. And I think translates really well into the open water is doing sets where within each, you know, within each hundred or 200 or whatever that particular rep is, like you'd go out really hard and then have to settle in. So I'll do like, you know, 50 at pace plus, plus, plus. And then like, you have to settle in cause you're doing like 300 for that particular rep. So you don't know, you can't stop. You have to like, and you can't take it easy on the 50 either. You got to really like let it rip. So I like those, but they're really, I mean, those are, those are super painful. I think one of the ones I got from you, which was torture. I think I was like cursing you while I was doing it was doing 30, 31 hundreds on like 150, something like that. So, I mean, I like stuff like that where you just mentally, it's like physical and mental. So you have to keep it together mentally cause you know you've got a long way to go. And it doesn't sound like it doesn't sound that hard

but you're only going, you're only going 100 yards, right? But when you're at like 15, 16, 17 and there's not a lot of rest there, that's like to me when you get that combination of the mental and physical challenge where you really got to like focus. Yeah, I mean, both of those kinds of sets are great. I mean, at the World Champs recently, an Aussie guy, Matt Houser won that race and his initial 100 meters in the swim, he went out like an absolute rocket. He was like, he got a body length on the field pretty quickly. He went out so hard and so fast. And I mean, most triathletes not gonna have to do that especially in an Ironman race but perhaps as a pro you'd have to but the change of pace stuff where you have to go hard and then you've got to settle, bring the heart rate back down, it is great to practice. And I've told this story a little bit on the podcast probably a year ago but a friend of mine is a pro triathlete and he was training with one of the best Ironman swimmers about a year ago. And he said that he was actually about the same pace in training but the thing that he wasn't very good at personally was that he wasn't very good at going out strong, kept being with the group and then sticking with them. So he had to work on that front end speed. And when he ended up training with this top triathlete he was doing a lot of sets which was like 150 hard and then five seconds rest into 250 moderate or like a seven, seven and a half out of 10. And then they do a hundred hard

and then like a 200 moderate. I mean, they do that sort of thing repeatedly. And so it's great for that front end speed if you want to kind of make a break for it. And then those like sustained efforts with short rest. Yeah, it really simulates that race. Like if you're doing a, well, what is it? 1.8K, 1.9K swim for a half Ironman. Well, if you can do 3,100s with five, 10 seconds rest, quick turnaround time. First eight, nine are fine but then you really start to feel it halfway through. And we did a set like that this morning which was just five seconds rest after each hundred. And yeah, the feedback I got was that set sucked but it was really good as well. It's just hard, it's painful but great for practicing what it's gonna be like in a race. Yeah. The other is really helpful. Yeah, yeah, for sure. The other thing that is hard for kind of a pedestrian swimmer like me who's gotten better but didn't grow up swimming is I try to do the other strokes too because it's so uncomfortable. Like to do butterfly or backstroke is so hard, it's so uncomfortable but I have started to feel how it kind of balances you out. Like I don't breathe to my non-comfortable side particularly well, but I started doing backstroke more and just kind of doing the drills where you swim like half the length and then kind of flip over and swim the rest backstroke. So doing things like that where it takes you out of your comfort zone.

Well, again, for someone like me who didn't grow up as a swimmer, I found those really beneficial. The other thing that really worked really well for me which was so hard to get used to was again so I didn't grow up with a swimming background so I wasn't doing flip turns at the pool, right? And someone said, just try doing a flip turn. You're gonna be a lot more comfortable if you could just keep the momentum going. So I started doing flip turns two years, maybe two years ago or so and it was so painful. I thought my lungs were gonna burst every time I pushed off the wall because I wasn't getting that quick breath. But I think it translates. Now it feels much more natural. I think it looks like a reasonable flip turn and it translates really well to the open water, right? Because you don't know, like I said before, you might go up for a breath and get like a foot in the face and not get like a clean breath or just get like a chop in the face and to be able to kind of know you could still stay settled down and you'll catch the next one. Like doing the flip turns and pushing off the wall and just kind of being patient in that extended position has been a game changer for sure. How did you get more comfortable doing flip turns? Just practice. Just keep doing it. I think I sent you, I sent you some videos. I was like, look at this horrendous flip turn. Can you help me please? And you sent me back some really helpful pointers and then I stuck a video camera on the bottom of the pool and would just watch my flip turn and just kind of compare it to some real flip turns

and over time it has actually progressed into like a halfway decent one. I can't like fully dolphin kick yet and get like a quarter down the length, but it looks halfway decent and yeah, it was just a matter of practice.

That's good.

Yeah, it's one of those initial hurdles for people where it's like, I might actually be going slower initially, I'm more tired, I'm more fatigued and so they don't wanna go through that two or three month period where they're having to adjust to it, but I think long-term, it's just, it's so much more enjoyable if you can get your flip turns and your speed will be better. And as you mentioned, it can correlate to being more comfortable in open water because you may not get every breath easily. Yeah, it's worthwhile putting the work in and from memory, I think, I think you might've been sort of like going in like hands in front maybe and trying to get around initially and then worked on getting the hands to the hips, flipping over and then straighten the streamline because I find when people were coming into the wall, like hands in front and then doing this big pull through with both arms, it's hard work. It's like, yeah, you're doing twice as much effort rather than just finishing both hands at the hip, tucking up nice and tight and then flipping over on your back. So there's some common mistakes there that do make the flip turns a hell of a lot harder. And one thing that people do too, which I don't think you were doing, but quite often they know that a good thing to do is some dolphin kicks under water and try and break out past the flags. But for most adults who haven't had that swim background, trying to do like four or five dolphin kicks under water, you're spending way too long under there. So I'd suggest for most people who are learning them, just push off, do a few freestyle kicks and break out and then you'll get your next breath fairly quickly. Don't try and replicate a Caleb Dressel

off the turns when we're baby steps. You know, we wanna start small. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, no, it's definitely been a progression. And that was another one of those moments where once that just kind of made me become even more hopelessly addicted to swimming was, like once you can hit that, like I could do a turn off the wall and then just like keep the momentum and the rhythm going where you don't feel like you, if you do an open turn, like you're stopping, you're starting, you feel like you got to start all over again, that's tiring. But being able to hit the wall and just like bounce off, that was another one of those moments where I was like, and I just, you know, I just love that. Like, you know, you pick something, you pick like some technical issue that you're having, you work to resolve it. It's painful and hard. And sometimes you wanna just like take your swim stuff and throw them in the dumpster and just like light them on fire. But you know, if you keep going, like it's gonna get better. And with the flip turn, it was definitely one of that. So that like feeling of being able to just like spring off and just keep the momentum and the rhythm going was another one of those like light bulb moments for sure. And what about now? What are you focused on now with your stroke and with your swimming? Yeah, so a lot more to come offline with you on this one. But I can't, right now, I am just leaving so much on the table because my left catch, I can't get my head back in the water fast enough to really be in proper position to get like the full catch and really get in a good position. So my left arm is dropping because I'm just kind of like spending too much time getting the breath.

So I'm just trying to get my face back. So I'm basically like, if you look at it, I'm swimming with just like basically, you know, like one effective catch and the other one is like serviceable. But I'm just trying to get, work on getting my head back in the water faster so that I could be like head straight ahead to like set up that left catch. So that's been, it's, I haven't been working on it that long, but I think you, you know, you helped me identify that one. And that's so far that's, it's been a, I've had to, I've had to think back to, hearing you say on many podcasts, like don't chase speed, right? And it's okay if you make a change and initially you're slower. Those are two pretty counterintuitive things. So that's hard, but yeah. So that's where I'm at right now. Yeah, fantastic. Well, it's, yeah, it's a long journey and the patience that you've got with working on these things and not trying to do it all at once, I think is why you've had such, partly why you've had such great success over the last couple of years. And I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes you in the next 12 to 24 months. And to see someone who initially is maybe a stronger rider, a stronger runner and a weaker swimmer, but then change and turn into loving swimming, that to me, I really love to see it. I'm being obviously a swimmer and a coach. And when someone finds that passion for swimming and especially the passion for the nuance of the stroke and finding these small areas that they can improve, that's really like to see it.

So I appreciate you jumping on the podcast and sharing that with everyone, because I think there's so many people who are in your shoes, especially that sort of two minute, two minute 10 pace. It's where a lot of people end up starting or getting to after 12 months. But then they feel like that next hurdle might be trying to get under that two minutes or down to 145. And then to get to that under 130 is a big hurdle for people. So I'm sure there's a lot of lessons in that. Is there anything that any say words of wisdom or anything you'd leave people with if they're wanting to do the same thing that we haven't covered yet? Yeah, no, I think like we talked about, it's just that patience. I think like you talk about, you have to just sort of take a long-term view of things and just know if you stay the course, like you're gonna make a change and things you're gonna get faster. It's just sometimes it's not linear. You know what I mean? Like if your approach is, I'm gonna go to the pool and try to make this change and in a few sessions, I'm gonna be like blazing around the pool, like you're just gonna be mad and frustrated. That's like the most helpful thing that I took away from what you always talk about. It's just like take, if you really love it, which I really, like I said, I really fell in love with swimming, like just take that long-term view and over time there's gonna be ups and downs, but it should trend in the right direction. Absolutely. Yeah, you might get like two or three strokes of like, oh, that felt nice, but you might not get it for a pool session for a while. So yeah, fantastic. Well, Brian, appreciate that a lot

and looking forward to seeing what you do over the next year or two and continuing to work together. So thank you for jumping on the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. If you can relate to what Brian was talking about in today's podcast, check out our Effortless Swimming Coaching membership. This is where we'll give you feedback every single month on what to focus on to take that next step with your swimming and how you can make those changes with certain drills and how you can make those changes permanent over three to six months. So if you'd like to improve your own swimming, check out our coaching membership at effortlessswimming.com and we'll be back with another episode next week.

The post How Much Can Your Swimming Improve In 2 Years? with Brian Hans appeared first on Effortless Swimming.

Bob Bowman — the legendary coach behind Michael Phelps and Leon Marchand — was recently on the Exponential Athlete Podcast, and listening to that episode completely changed the way I think about swimming. In today’s episode, I’m going to share with you 12 powerful ideas I learned from that conversation — insights that can help you take your swimming to the next level.

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. Bob Bowman, the legendary coach of Michael Phelps and Leon Marchand, he was recently on the Exponential Athlete Podcast. And I listened to this episode and it completely changed the way I thought about some parts of swimming. So in this video, I'm going to share with you 12 powerful ideas I got from that podcast so you don't have to listen to the whole thing. What's actually relevant to the amateur triathlete or swimmer that you can take away and practice that's going to make a difference in your swimming, rather than wasting the next six to 12 months, not progressing in your swimming. Consistency beats perfection. Michael Phelps and Leon Marchand never really had many 10 out of 10 sessions, but they had a lot of eight out of 10 sessions. So he found that they would never really have these standout sessions where they were just absolutely smashing it, but they were very, very consistent with the high level of training that they did. Very rarely would they dip below their average. Occasionally, if they're sick or didn't get a good night's sleep, they might, but over the, over the course of many, many years, most of those sessions were an eight out of 10. So we're not looking for perfection every single training session, but we do

want to maintain a very high level across the board. And if you've got that consistency, more times than not, that is what actually makes a difference. Practice performing under pressure. Bob Bowman, one time accidentally broke Michael Phelps' goggles before a race. He accidentally stood on them and Phelps didn't realize this until after the race. So he did the turn of butterfly, I think it was, and the goggles leaked. But he said to Bob, I like, I just counted my strokes and that's how I actually knew where I was in the lap. And so if you can create these environments and these scenarios in your training, where you are putting yourself under pressure and you're having to adapt and you're having to be challenged by the time the race comes around, you've experienced it and you know, you can handle it because more times than that, you are going to find yourself in a race situation where there's something that is thrown at you left field and you have to deal with it. And so if you can put yourself in that situation in training as often as possible, then you know, by the time the race falls around, you've experienced every scenario that could possibly go wrong. And so you know how to deal with it. Process over outcome. Bob Bowman said that Michael Phelps slept like a baby before every big competition because he knew the work had been done and there was nothing more that he could do by the time the race rolled around. And so he said that anything that you want to do can be achieved.

If you make the first step small, whether that's winning an Olympic gold, whether that's doing your first Ironman, if you make that first goal small enough to achieve, then you can build up that momentum to reach that final outcome. And so that age old saying of how do you eat an elephant? It's one bite at a time. He said, just even that would really help them think about these big goals that they've got for world records, for gold medals at Olympics. It starts small and then you just tick those things off each and every day. Relax and focus under pressure. Bob shared that Leon especially was not initially great at staying calm in these high pressure situations of well, championships and Olympics, but he got himself to that point where he found that he could stay in that relaxed state of mind, even when he was at the highest level of competition, but it's something that is trainable and doesn't necessarily need to be an innate skill that you've got. The power of underwaters, the fastest that elite level swimmers can move in the water is when they are in a streamlined position and doing dolphin kicks. Now this is not necessarily something for the average triathlete or the average adult swimmer where they have these great underwaters that can generate a lot of speed. But for Michael Phelps, for Leon Marchand, these guys, they have incredible underwaters, but it's something that they would work on all the time. And that's when it became really a, a real weapon of theirs.

And they were able to surpass the competition because they worked on these great underwaters. Even if it might not be the thing for you as a triathlete, it might be your ability to adapt the stroke to open water. It might be a different skillset, but they were very intentional about the skills that they wanted to work on. And those underwaters were a key part because they felt that if they could generate great speed off each turn and get themselves close to 15 meters off every single wall, that would give them a huge advantage over the rest of the competition. Different approaches can work for different people. Bob Bowman shared that Michael Phelps and Leon Marchand were very different in their approach to how they trained and how they performed and rested and all these different things. So he said that Michael was very intense. Once the session was set, there'd be no deviating from it. And he felt like that was partly upbringing in culture, being American, being brought up in the household he was brought up in. He was very much set in those ways and wouldn't miss a training session for many years on end. Leon, on the other hand, being French, being European, he has a much more relaxed style of not training necessarily, but how he approached things. He would take six weeks off after a major competition. Once the session was set, it would be okay if part of that main set was changed. He would be okay with it, but he had very different personality to Michael.

And so the thing I took away from that is there is so many different ways to skin a cat, so many different ways to get from A to B. And it probably depends a lot on your personality, how your body responds to things and perhaps the way you see things. And so that's good to know, I think from a coaching perspective, but also as an athlete, you may not have to necessarily train the way or do the things that you see some of the elite triathletes doing or the elites from us doing, everyone's got their own different approach and it can work depending on the person. The seventh big idea I got from this is training volume and breaks. So I referenced it just before, but Michael spent something like five or six years where he didn't miss a training session, didn't not train for a day, even over Christmas, they would do something like 1500 meters just to get in the water and say that they'd trained, whereas Leon was okay with taking weeks off after a major competition. And I think we saw this through COVID where a lot of the swimmers couldn't get in the water, but we actually saw some of them had incredible Olympic campaigns, even though they'd spent several weeks or sometimes even months out of the water. So again, it just depends on the person, but to me, it shows that rest is very important for, for everyone, but for a lot of people, you may actually need to rest more than what you think if you feel like you are overtraining. And I see that a lot with some triathletes, Ironman athletes. They really have this idea of, I've got to train as much as possible,

but they forget how important rest is. And I speaking to Kat Matthews and her husband, Mark, it's interesting to see their balance between work and rest. She is very smart about the way she approaches her rest, where she sees that that is a very important part of her ability to perform. And I think for a lot of people, they just have this go, go, go mentality, which for some people, it's not the right approach necessarily. Michael Phelps started visualization at 11 years of age. And by the time he had gone to his main competition, he had swung that race in his head more than a hundred times and he'd actually visualized the things that could go wrong. Every little situation that could go not in his favor, he pictured going through that experience and coming up with a plan B or what would happen if this, this challenge is presented to me. And so I think it's an important way to get ready on race day is look, you may not have the ability to get into a pool anymore. You might not have the ability to fit in any more training sessions and your body might not have the ability to recover from any more training. But what you can do is you can visualize the race in your head and you can put yourself in that situation and your body doesn't know the difference between living it out in real life and visualizing that in your mind. And so by picturing yourself on race day, what's going to happen? What do you want to happen by the time you stand behind the blocks or

you're standing behind that start line, you are going to find this level of comfort that you wouldn't have otherwise. And so I remember when I was 14 years of age, I was training for the 400 IM every night before I'd go to bed, I would picture myself swimming this 400 IM and by the time my nationals rolled around that race pretty much played out exactly how I pictured it in my mind, I was about half a second off the time that I'd set myself and pretty much just felt like living out a movie that I played in my head multiple times. And so I think it's one of the most undersold parts of performance when it comes to swimming or triathlon. At Effortless Swimming, our mission is simple. Make swimming more enjoyable. Whether you're training for your next race, swimming for fitness, or just love being in the water, we're here to help you swim faster, smoother, and with more confidence. And one thing that can make or break a swim is your goggles. If you've ever struggled with foggy lenses mid-session, you know how frustrating it can be. That's why we created the Effortless Swimming Hydro Clear Anti-Fog Goggles for long lasting crystal clear vision. I've been using them myself and the difference is night and day. And I'm not the only one. Deborah swam 36 kilometers down the Derwent River and the entire time her vision stayed crystal clear. No fog, no frustration, just an uninterrupted swim. So what makes a Hydro Clear Goggles different? It's all in the technology. Unlike ordinary anti-fog coatings that wear off over time,

Hydro Clear Super Hydrophilic technology is built into the lens material itself. Here's how it works. Instead of fog forming as tiny droplets, water spreads evenly across the lens, creating a thin film that prevents fog from even starting. And the result? Consistently clear vision, swim after swim. And the durability? Our lenses are CNAS certified. Tests show that even after 2000 rubs with a wet cloth under a 200 gram load, the lens stays fog free. No gimmicks, just serious performance that lasts. Using them is simple. Just wet the lenses before putting them on and you're set for a fog free swim. Ready to see the difference yourself? Get 15% off your first pair of Hydro Clear anti-fog goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlessswimming.com. That's 15% off your first pair of goggles with the code podcast at shop.effortlessswimming.com. We also have a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you're not happy with the goggles for any reason, you can simply return them for a refund. Don't let foggy goggles ruin another swim. Try Hydro Clear today and experience clear vision from start to finish. Bob would use the term of making deposits into a swimming bank account. Every session that they would do, they would be making a deposit so that when it rolls around to the end of the season, you can take out this deposit from the bank and you can put that into your final race. So that simple analogy is a good way to think about your training.

You are not looking to spend your money there. You're looking to put these little deposits into the bank account. And if you can have that delayed gratification of all this work that you're doing will eventually pay off, then that is when you'll find yourself swimming better 12 months down the track. And I find the same thing when it comes to technique, the swimmers that are trying to fast track their improvement and be swimming 10 seconds faster next week often don't make the changes that are going to stick. And so the ones that work away at their stroke for two months, three months, and they're not too concerned about their times because they're just focused on the technique. If they can delay that gratification, it's three to six months down the line, they find that they're actually a lot faster. The techniques have become their habit and they lock those in. And so I think that delayed gratification works in many different ways. Bob Bowman saw his role as a coach as creating an environment where success is inevitable. So he said that whenever someone would come to him and they were looking at potentially moving to his squad, he said, the one thing I can promise you is that if you come through our squad, you're going to be stepping into an environment where we are performing at the highest level. And if you do, as I say, you will achieve these goals that you've set because the standard that we set in our group and in our squad is of excellence. And I think that is such an important thing to note because what are the other training partners that you're swimming with like?

What is the, what are the other people like that you're hanging around? Who are the club members, your, your squad, your coach, what's their expectation on you and what level are they performing at? Because I think that culture and that position that you, you put yourself in, uh, can really make or break whether or not you're going to hit those goals that you want. So who are those people that you're surrounding yourself with? Always be willing to experiment. Bob Bowman shared that they would always be trying some new things inside of the things that they know would work. So if you're coaching the same program for 10 years in a row, those swimmers that have been doing that program for 10 years, they're probably going to lose some interest, but they know what works. So how do you keep it interesting? Well, the way they keep it interesting is that they do either change the way that they explain things or change how they do things slightly. So that adds a little bit of novelty to it, but they'd also be throwing in some things that are brand new. And he would let them know that this is something that we're going to try. If it doesn't work, we can always go back to what we were doing, but I have a feeling that this is something that's going to help us going forward and quite often when you change anything, you will have regression initially, but if it's something that's ultimately going to work two or three months down the track, you're likely to see the results of that thing. And hopefully that's in a positive way, but it's very normal to experience some sort of regression initially when you're looking to change any part of your program or your technique or the things that you're

doing. And the last idea I got from the podcast is the importance of feedback and data. They do a lot of lactate testing and they want to see whether or not the work and the practice that they're doing in training is helping the athletes clear lactate from their blood faster. And so with their lactate testing, they want to see basically the level of lactate that they get and then how quickly that clears from their blood. And so what we want to be doing in training is being able to train in a way where we are working hard. We're building up this level of lactate in the blood, but it's more important to make sure that we're clearing it and how quickly do we clear it. So for some of these guys like Phalx or Leon, they are doing multiple races on the same day. And if they're not able to clear that lactate from the blood, it means that they're going into their next race as with fatigue and it means they're probably not going to perform at their best. And so they wanted to use this data to make sure that the training they're doing is actually working. And then when they saw that it was working, it not only was good to know, but it showed the athletes that it works and it gave them the confidence in the program. And so that builds up on itself, not only with the confidence, but they have more buy-in to the program. And so that's a big part of how they use that data and that feedback. So I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll link to the full podcast below if you want to take a look at it. But I think it's great to see how two different people from who have

achieved very similar things, have been able to do that with the help of a coach like Bob Bowman. 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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If you find yourself gasping for air after just one lap in the pool, this episode is for you. After coaching nearly 10,000 swimmers over the past 19 years, I’ve discovered that mastering your breathing is one of the quickest ways to transform your swimming.

In this episode, I’ll show you how to regulate your breathing so you can swim lap after lap without feeling exhausted — like taking an evening stroll in the water instead of fighting to stay afloat. You’ll also learn the number one mistake most beginners make that can stall their progress for months, and how to fix it fast.

Plus, if you’re new to swimming, don’t miss our free 7-day email series that breaks down every key part of your stroke to help you swim more efficiently and confidently.

01:14 Why Does Your Breathing Matter?

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

If you’re gasping for air after just one lap, this video is for you. In this video, I’m going to show you how you can regulate your breathing so that you can swim 100 laps without stopping instead of being completely gassed after just one. I’ve coached almost 10,000 swimmers in person over the last 19 years of coaching. And I found that this is something that you can change fairly quickly once you know how to do it correctly. So in this video, I’ll share with you how you can regulate your breathing so it feels like you are out for an evening stroll instead of feeling like you’re being dunked under in big giant waves where you feel like there’s panic and that you’re going to run out of air very quickly. And at the end of this video, I’ll share with you the one mistake that most beginners make that causes them to lose or waste the next six to 12 months of their swimming because they don’t fix this one mistake. And if you’re a beginner, check out our seven

day free email series to help you with all the different parts of your stroke that you need to get in place to help you with your swimming. I’ll link to that in the description below. Now, why does your breathing matter? Well, without oxygen, you’re going to have no energy to put into your swimming. So we need to learn how to breathe in a relaxed way and a comfortable way. And it’s probably not that your unfit is that you’re breathing inefficiently. So the goal is to stay relaxed and not gasp for out. So the way that we do this is we obviously need to breathe in above the water, exhale below the water. When we breathe in, we’re not trying to fill up our lungs to 100%. It might be 70 to 80%. So it’s like if you’re going for a walk, you’re not going to take in as much as you can to 100% and then exhale fully. We need to keep that breathing range in sort of 20%, 30% to about 70 to 80%. So we’re never going above and below that range, because

that’s just not sustainable. And we don’t have the time to inhale that much or necessarily exhale that much. The other important thing there too, is that we need to make sure that we are exhaling when our face is in the water. One big mistake that people make here is that they never really exhale enough. So it’s like they’re just topping up and topping up and topping up. And that’s why they find after a lot they’re completely gassed because they’ve never exhaled enough of that carbon dioxide to be able to get rid of it and then not get that lactic acid sort of feeling. So we need to make sure that we are exhaling when our face is in the water. The way that I teach people to do it is gradual exhale when your face is in primarily through the nose, but it’s fine if it’s through the mouth as well. A gradual exhalation on our faces in. And then as we’re turning the head to breathe to get that next breath, that is when we want to release the rest of the air.

And we’re not trying to release every last drop of air that we’ve got there. It’s releasing majority of it, but you’ll still have that little bit left because we don’t have time to completely clear the lungs. So light exhale, bigger exhale as you’re turning to get that next breath. And then we’re ready to inhale. When we inhale, it’s like a sip of air. So it’s not this big gasp of air, it’s like a sip of air, because you’ll find you don’t actually need that much to keep your heart rate down and to be comfortable. So when we inhale, think of it as a sip of air. And don’t open your mouth up too much, because if you’re going for this breath with a big open mouth, you’ll find you’re taking a lot more water. Whereas if you look at the best ones in the world, when they’re taking a breath, it’s almost like they’re reaching around with their mouth, getting that sip of air, and then coming back. And that smaller hole that they’ve got means that

they’re not taking water in. And it also just helps them take that quick sip of air. So you probably need less air than you think. Now I know that can be hard to hard to grasp when you feel like you’re completely gassed after 40 meters or so. But if you can regulate your breathing from the start of a lap like this, you’ll find that you can continue much further. So we’re not trying to hold our breath. We generally want to make sure we are constantly exhaling. The only time you would hold your breath is if you’re doing a breath control set, where you might be breathing every five strokes or seven strokes. But if you’re watching this video, that’s probably not what you need to be doing right now. Hey, real quick, in case you didn’t know, we run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan with Sundays, Galapagos Islands, plus a bunch of new locations for next year. So if you’d like to join us at

a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world, then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps. We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there. A question I get all the time is I’m not that quick. Will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps. So as long as you can swim a kilometer, there’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you. And if you’re not sure, just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp. Thanks for listening. Let’s get back to the podcast. Now the next step to regulating your breathing is make sure we time it correctly with the stroke. Because if your breathing is out of sync with your arms and your rotation, then that’s going to make it very difficult to achieve. So to make sure that we are able to get the breath comfortably, we need to

make sure that as one hand is coming forwards and we’re rotating onto the side, that’s when we’re starting to turn the head. So the head will go in time with the body roll. So we’re coming forwards here. This arm in front is going to give you something to balance on. So if you keep that arm reaching forwards and just take a little bit of time extending out, you’ve got your balance there. And as we rotate about 30 or 40 degrees on the side, that is when you can turn the head. And so by the time you finish reaching forwards and you’re on your side here, that is when you are ready to inhale. And then we inhale and then as this arms coming back around, we bring the head back with it. So think about turning the head in time with the shoulders and back with the shoulders. What a lot of people tend to do is they will rotate on the side and then they’ll turn the head and then they’ll come around. But it’s out of sync. And so they

feel like they don’t have enough time to get the breath because they’re turning their head too late. It’s also important to make sure you breathe in the correct position. So if you are taking water in when your head’s off to the side, it could be because of the position of your head as you’re breathing. The mistake most people make here is they lift up first, then they turn their head and the top of their head is well above the water. Instead of having their bottom goggle in, half their head in, half their head out. They’ve got the top of their head up too high. Now what’s the problem with that? Well it’s very hard to create this little bow wave around your mouth if the top of your head is too high because you need this part of your head in the water to be able to create that little bit of a bow wave that helps you get that breath low. So the way I would teach this is think about having a skewer through your head, neck and spine. When we turn to

breathe, we turn the skewer and the head’s on that skewer so it just turns and then it comes back. It doesn’t come off that skewer because that’s going to break that line. That way you can get the breath low and you can also make sure that that bow wave’s there. If you’re learning this, it’s totally fine to turn a bit further and maybe have the head up a little bit higher as you’re getting used to it. But ultimately we want to try and get that breath relatively low, relatively quick and that way it’s going to sink in nicely with your stroke. But I don’t mind if you turn a little bit further as you’re learning it and then we can start to bring that back to the optimum position. Now let’s talk about breathing patterns. You’ve probably heard many contradictory ways of doing this in terms of how often you should breathe. This is a very individual thing. One thing I see a lot of with beginner swimmers is they try and take

too many strokes in between breaths. So they might not be taking a breath for five strokes or so. Now even with really fit really good swimmers, if they are trying to hold a breathing pattern of every five strokes or seven strokes, it is not sustainable for a long period of time especially if they’re going hard. So I would suggest either breathing every two strokes or every three strokes. Now depending on the level you’re at, every two strokes you aren’t going to get more air in and that’s priority number one. We need to make sure we’re getting enough oxygen because without it you’re going to tire. But it is good to be able to breathe to both sides and so it’s an important skill to develop. Breathing every three strokes you will be breathing to both sides but you can still breathe every two strokes and cover your bases there. You might go one lap breathing to the left, one lap breathing to the right. So I want you

to develop that skill of bilateral breathing but it doesn’t have to be breathing every three strokes. So if you find that breathing every three is not sustainable, go to every two. That’s what I prefer. A lot of elite swimmers prefer breathing every two but they will mix it up in training where they are breathing to the other side. At least for 20 or 30% of their session if not more. So there’s no hard and fast rules and it can change within a lap. Let’s say you’re swimming 50 meters you might breathe every two strokes off the wall for 10 strokes then you might go to every three and you might go back to every two before you come in for the turn. So there’s no hard and fast rules there. Mix it up and just see what works best for you. Now to help keep your heart rate down as you’re doing this we need to keep relaxation in our body and the way that we move. Now not so much relaxation that we’re just like this noodle in the water we need to have a

little bit of tension to hold our shape and hold our form but we really need to make sure that we’ve got this softness and suppleness about the way that we hold our body and we move through the water. So if you’ve got this tension in your jaw and in your stroke and in your body that is going to use a lot of energy even though you’re not doing a whole lot it’s that unnecessary tension that can cause you to have an elevated heart rate and tire a lot quicker. So I really like to do some drills in the water some exercises in the water where we work on that softness in the body. Now one of those drills is hang floats where you can take a breath in you can hold your breath and just floating in the water and that can help you relax through the shoulders relax through the legs relax through the body and help you just kind of switch off and get comfortable. You can also do sink downs which is breathe in then gradual exhale and as you gradually exhale you

find yourself probably sinking to the bottom if you don’t have a lot of buoyancy you might not completely sink down but we want to get comfortable having not much air in the lungs and we repeat that about 10 times. So you’ve got hang floats sink downs and then you can also do some floating drills as well where you’re floating in a ball and then floating on your front with both arms extended and both legs extended trying to be horizontal in the water and this way if you learn to keep this suppleness and softness about your body that removes a lot of the unnecessary energy that gets used because we’re holding this tension that we don’t need. Now when it comes to adapting this to open water some of these rules will go out the window because in open water we don’t have this calm flat conditions like we do in the pool we’ve got ways and we’ve got chop and we’ve got this unpredictability about it. So when it comes to open water you may have to

turn a little bit further to get your breath you may need to lift up and sight first before you turn to breathe. You’ll also probably find you need to breathe to both sides because depending on which way the chop is coming you might have to turn and breathe to your non-preferred side so that’s why it’s worthwhile learning to breathe to both sides. So some of these things will change when we go to the open water but what won’t change is the regulation of the breathing making sure that you’re inhaling and exhaling in the correct way and if you have any sort of tension or panic when you do hit the open water what I would suggest is start small is go near the shoreline go with friends or other people in a place where you can stand up and go where it’s nice and calm and then progressively build up what you’re comfortable doing and if you can eventually get to this point where you’re in very choppy conditions which as a beginner you might feel like oh this

is just not not safe or not comfortable if you can begin begin small and then eventually get yourself comfortable in these bigger conditions that there’s a lot of chopping waves then you will really start to find that you can kick this heart rate down you can regulate your breathing in conditions that you thought weren’t possible beforehand but I think start small and then gradually build it up if you enjoyed this video take a look at this video here which has got our 33 minute breakdown of the full freestyle stroke that will help you swim faster for a whole lot less effort 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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