It’s not a good reflection on what I consider myself an expert in. So you’ve got to practice what you preach up. Indeed, indeed. Yeah. So there were three areas that came up in Panavidra that really sort of opened my eyes. Well, that was incredibly self-defeating and I know a lot of traffic to think that sort of thing, especially if they’re not swimmers. That’s how you’re going to know what works for you, whether it’s long and strong or whether it’s just push, push, push. That’s when you’ll start to get a handle on it. Yeah, absolutely. 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.

Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My name is Brenton Ford. I’m a swim coach based in Australia and I work with swimmers all around the world to improve their technique and to make them better swimmers and ultimately live a better life. On today’s episode, we have Dr. Jim Taylor, who is a psychologist specializing in sports and performance. And Dr. Jim Taylor has been on our podcast multiple times and every time I get him on, I get texts, I get messages from people saying that was really helpful. So I want to get him back on to talk about a few more topics related to mindset and performance in psychology. And he’s recently returned from the world champs in Spain and I asked him about his experience there and what sort of tactics and strategies did he use personally with all the experience that he’s got. So he talks about what he did and what he learned from those races and some of the topics we discussed today

include changing your intensity depending on the distance in the event that you’re doing, what to focus on, when to focus on it and how you may need to change your focus depending on what race you’re doing as well and the mindset that’s required to help you be successful in training and then how you can carry that into your races. And the final thing we discuss is being 100% honest with where you’re at and how a reality check can be a little painful at the start. But if you really want to get better and you really want to improve that 100% honest assessment of where you’re currently at can be the best thing going forwards, especially into 2024 and how you can make that your best year yet. And I told two stories about where I didn’t want to face reality initially, but when I did, I actually turned my swimming around and has helped me take that next step with it. Before we get into the podcast, I’ve got two things to ask

you. One is if you haven’t left to say review or a star rating on Spotify or Apple podcast, wherever you listen to this podcast, I would love it if you do. That would be the main thing that would help me out immensely because the more people that see this that has good ratings, then the more people that will listen to it and if you know anyone that is looking to improve psychologically with their racing, please share it with them. Thanks so much. Let’s get into the episode with Dr. Jim Taylor. Jim, you’ve been a guest on this podcast multiple times. I’d say you’re an expert in the psychology of sports and performance and that’s why I’ve had a lot of people reply after hearing your podcast saying that was a great episode. I got a lot out of it because I think the mental side of things is a large part of the equation when it comes to success in swimming or triathlon or life or parenting so many, so many areas of life.

So welcome back first of all and you’ve just returned from Spain. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah. First of all, great to see you again, Brenton. I really enjoyed your recent show on Lucy Charles Parkley and what makes her so good. Really fascinating. Anyway, so yeah, I came back on maybe a month ago from Pond of Asia, Spain. It was the world super sprint and Olympic distance age group and professional world championships. So that was great challenge and a lot of great lessons learned there that I’m going to share with you today and it’s sort of interesting because I always have to meld my athletic life with my professional life and I use my professional life to make me a better athlete, but it’s always a fun give and take because I learned a lot of stuff in graduate school to getting my PhD and working on that side. But there’s nothing like being in the thick of it and you know, being in the water, being on the bike,

being on the run and then dealing with all those challenges. So one thing that I always have a column in my blog, a section of my blog called I practice what I preach because that’s one of the pressures of being doing what I do that I can’t like freak out or anything, but it’s all fine for sure. You went and you had some really good results there in Spain, a number of podiums. I think you said it was your best result yet at a world championships. Actually, it was sort of even. It was my third podium in a row tooth. I’ve had three thirds so far going back to Abu Dhabi in last November and then Humbert, Germany in in July and then Panavidra earlier this fall. So I’m consistent. I’m third. I thought the possibility of a world championship was was there, but you never know who’s going to show up and this this one Frenchman showed up who is just a ripper and there was like no chance. Yeah, yeah, gotcha. Well, I’d love to get stuck into some of those things

that you had to work on yourself. And I mean, I find the same thing coaching when I’m in the in the water training consistently. I come up with new ideas. I can test out some things that I’ve been been using. And if I if I swim and it’s it’s slow and I’m back of the pack and it’s not a good reflection on what I consider myself an expert in. So you’ve got to practice what you preach up. Indeed. Indeed. Yeah. So there were three areas that came up in Panavidra that really sort of opened my eyes and they were my physical intensity before the race, my focus and then my mindset. And so if you want, I can jump into each of those and we can talk about each one. Yeah, let’s do it. Okay, so when I talk about physical intensity, think that you can think of this range from really relaxed like sleep to unbelievably tense like sheer terror and somewhere between sleep and sheer terror. You swim your best and so it depended upon the

event and the distance and also just your personality. You’ll see some swimmers are super chill some kind of medium fire up and others are like bouncing off the wall really super intense and you can probably come up with better examples from the swimming circuit that I can and then but it also interacts with it with the distance. So as a general rule and this is part of my lesson I learned in Panavidra was that the the short of the distance, the higher the intensity and as the distance gets longer, lower intensity because obviously high intensity you’re burning fuel and so if you’re swimming 2.4 miles before the at the start of an Ironman you can’t be burning fuel and so I’ve been thinking about this since Hamburg the World Championships there which were the sprint and the mixed relay and and playing with different levels of intensity in the pool and then when I was doing open water as well and what I came to realize was that I wasn’t

getting fired up enough for the super sprint which is my better event and it’s about 400 meters and it’s basically full gas entry to exit. And so what I started and so I got this from my coach and was that it’s really important to the shorter sprints where you’re going full gas from beginning you can’t settle in is to make sure that your body is ready for it. He’s a ghost if you go out and your body is too relaxed in your body like a shock it’s like oh my gosh I need to get going and then you go into in Takoxia and actually heard this to when Lionel Sanders did Super League in London last fall and he was he was practicing and he said same thing for him like usually in a half Ironman and Ironman he would be working himself into the swim and into the bike into the run whereas his this he just wasn’t ready for it. And so what I began doing as I lined up with my group for the age group was just constantly moving

jumping up and down doing push-ups breathing intensely and it’s interesting to observe everybody else literally everybody else was just standing around and either chatting or standing quietly and that’s what I used to do so I’m not judging them but but what I noticed was that when as soon as I hit the water my body was ready to go and I could go really really high intensity and so that was a really big lesson for me and then for the Olympic distance obviously a bit of a longer swim you know twice to two and half times longer I was still active because I wanted I wanted my body to be able to go at that pace but so I was active but not quite as active so for me especially before swim were very often at least at the world level we don’t have the opportunity to warm up in the water. So so you can’t you can’t get ready in that you know five minutes of swimming back and forth next to the start and then climb out and then

get get the starter and so it’s really important to get your body going so being super active to get that intensity up especially short races but even the longer ones being active getting your body prepared because even though than Ironman you still have to go out pretty hard to get it going. That now that you say it makes a lot of sense and I haven’t really heard that before talked about that way but reflecting on my own experience reflecting on if you look at the 50 sprinters they’re generally like that they’re the big boys and the big girls who are generally quite you know they they get fired up and there’s a lot of in the men’s race a lot of testosterone flying and then if compare that to the 1500 in the pool those those guys those girls are a lot more relaxed behind the starting box because you have to be just can’t you’ve got to work your work your way into it so that’s interesting and something I’ve never sort of considered before.

Well that’s why I’m here Brandon I’ve given you some new ideas and so I really encourage swimmers and triathletes to experiment a little bit because I talk about that continuum from sleep to share terror is no one level it’s a very personal and so it’s a matter of experimenting and I find and this is interesting because this goes way back to when I was an Alpine ski racer back in the day when I was a kid same thing there I didn’t get fired up enough and and so I sort of started off slowly and so so doing things to keep yourself activated and it’s funny because I feel a little self-conscious because again everybody’s standing around and I’m dropping down doing doing 20 pushups and doing squats and jumping up and down but there’s an old saying here in the US that I heard people people get out of the way of crazy people and so so maybe there’s a little intimidation factor there I don’t know but the main thing is to just feel like when I when I hit

the water I am physiologically ready to go because if you’re not physiologically ready to go the mental stuff just doesn’t matter but the physiological stuff begins with the mental stuff of being aware of where you need to be with your intensity and then taking these active steps so begin with Pratt with your with your swim training both pool and open water and see what works for you see what enables you to go fast one little caveat to that and this is something that I learned from you is that you can’t force fast swimming like you can’t try to swim fast you need to let your body just flow with the water and one thing I’ve been really working on is developing my relationship with the water which I got from you and not fighting against it and again Lionel is a great example of somebody who fights the water constantly and of course he struggles and so there’s a balance between staying relaxed in terms of your stroke and your cadence while having

enough you know heart rate adrenaline blood flow for your body to function at at a pretty high level of intensity when you’re when you’re swimming and that’s the that’s the thing that takes a while to figure out you know if you’ve got on a scale of one to ten you don’t want to be that one you don’t want to be a ten where it’s just extreme tension through the body it’s like a depending on the race you’re doing but it’s like a seven it’s like that that’s seven where you’ve got it we operate best that way you’ve got that a little bit of relaxation where you move freely and but yeah enough enough intensity to be able to get out there and go fast and I think the sprinters the 50 hundred meters and as they are the the very best at finding that because they’ll have stroke rates of hundred and ten hundred and twenty strokes a minute in a in a fifty freestyle super fast but they’ve still got to have that feel and that hold of the water

even though they’ve got this rapid turnover so it’s it’s amazing to to watch and for them to be able to sort of find that balance between a huge amount of physical exertion a lot of like it got to be very strong to be able to do it but to have that finesse and that that grace still so I mean I I can’t find that in the fifty or a hundred I’m a I’m a two hundred meter plus event swimmer that’s why I admire those guys who can do it before we dive into the rest of today’s podcast episode this episode is proudly brought to you by form smart swim goggles they’ve been a longtime sponsor of the podcast and they are my go to goggles when it comes to tracking my training sessions and being able to see what’s happening in real time through the goggles and we know swimming is a highly technical sport but without the guidance of a coach on deck identifying and addressing technique flaws can be a challenge that recently added a new

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so the second key thing that I got there was was focused and so in the water what do you focus on because you yes you have to site but more than anything it’s just like what’s going through your mind in terms of are you focusing on technique are you focusing on people around you are you focusing on citing are you focusing on on you know how much longer you have to go and so I find there’s a balance I try not to focus on technique and I you know I will admit to everybody here I’m not a great swimmer growing up I was in the non drowning category and I suffered from what Lionel called called adult onset swimming and so you know someone like you I’ve seen you swim on your on your videos and there’s something about people who grew up swimming that they have this relationship the water with the water this way they move through the water that I will never have or maybe you can teach me I don’t know but I haven’t yet but but the important thing is

I find in training it’s important to focus on technique because you just need to do a lot of repetition and ingrain the good motor skills so it is associated with swimming but in the race I find it’s it’s much better to have some sort of sort of motivational sort of cues and and and this will tie into the third area that that I’ll get into in a minute but really being able to focus effectively on something that will help you swim better because I know I know a number of triathletes and swimmers who they’re all about technique in races that they just focus on technique and that ensures that they do what’s proper because I learned this from you 80% of fast swimming is technical it’s not like strength it’s not like trying and so so being able to have a clear focus on what will help you perform well and it could be something technical it could be something physiological like focusing on your breathing and it could be something that which again I’ll

get to with number three and in my topics for today. Yeah it’s and it’s going to be different for everyone right and it might even change depending on the on the event and I think it’s hard to completely switch off from thinking about your your technique but we want to try and just drill those habits in training that’s where it that’s where they become automated and then in the racing I find for most people it’s like just focus on on your intensity on your effort and good race skills making sure you’re siding properly making sure you maybe finding feet whatever it might be for you so that’s why we don’t want to overthink in with the stroke and people generally move a little bit more robotically and mechanically if they’re overly thinking about the stroke and I have a number of swimmers who might come to a clinic I might work with online and you know we do most of our work is on the the technical side of things and the ones that will be

overly focused on that this technique usually their stroke rate is too low maybe by 10-15% in the race and so their times are sometimes a bit slower as well until they then just kind of get used to being able to switch off from it so it’s a common thing that I see when people were really focusing on their technique it’s it can impact their racing negatively if they continue to do that when they’re racing right and I still I still think I struggle with that and essentially brought up cadence because I’m a huge fan of swim form swim goggles and and so I use them all the time in the pool and I’ve been using them more and more in open water and I’ve been wearing them in races and it that it says this time I don’t have I don’t have hooked up to my watch so I don’t do distance but it messes stroke rate and that’s something I struggle with so I’m able to get that clear data during training during a race that I need to up my strokes per

minute and that gives me a good focus because I have a tendency to I don’t have to I don’t really know how hard to push myself and that’s my next that’s my this winner’s challenge for me in my trainees to figure out how hard can I push myself and still be able to get out of the water and bike and run and because you know I I’ve been a runner a long time and that’s by far my strength but and so I know just their experience that I can go really I can go a certain pace for for quite a while and of course it’s the last event so I just need to make it to the finish line but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard Brenton of anybody blowing up in the swim I mean going out too hard and then not be you know getting into T1 and just not being able to go or being blown up enough to not be able to bike and run but I still part of my focus now is is really trying to push my limits and see how fast I can go and how quickly and and this actually played out really

well in in Spain because in the Olympic distance I’m typically like a 140 guy and I’ve been stuck there for a long time per 100 yards sorry 140 per 100 yards and there I did 133 and and I attributed a lot to these three areas again we’ll get the third one a second that that I really focused on in preparing for it and and I think it was higher cadence for sure and then to the super sprint which I was third in I came out of the water I think like 12 out of 50 or something like that I don’t remember exactly but that was a big improvement for me because usually I’m like in the middle of the pack so I’m playing serious ketchup but this time and again it was about keeping the intensity up really focusing on what would enable me to to maintain speed over that 400 meters. Yeah, that’s that’s a great result isn’t I mean that’s what do you what are you talking now talking like five percent quicker roughly which is a which is a great

result and I see that when I think of development and something you’ve got people who are brand new just finding their way getting comfortable being able to relax then when people get a little bit more established they can make it to the end and they’re just worried about conserving energy and getting out out fresh and then once you get to that third level of swimming or whatever sport it is that’s where you can start to play around with your pacing you can start to test how hard can I push this thing and that’s when it really gets gets fun and you you start to get a good innate sense of the effort level and what you can sustain and it sounds like that’s kind of where you’re at with your swimming at the moment is starting to figure that out. Yeah just starting to and you told me when I first met you on a year or two ago that that you can work on technique but it takes actually a long time to sort of pull it all together and and I hope I’ve been

really focusing on it since I discovered you on on YouTube on proper technique I truly never understood proper swim technique until I started watching your videos and since then I’ve just been super focused on it and now I mean I feel really comfortable in the water and you know I don’t know what I look like from the outside but I’m still working on getting some videos to see myself but but I feel comfortable and I feel sort of natural I feel like I’ve got a decent stroke going and I think that comforts really important and then it’s you know it’s taken a lot of miles to get that good feeling and now hopefully this next stage before my first races next March I’ll be able to get more miles and start to experiment as you indicate with with how fast can I go and number three 20. Yeah so that’s that’s what I call mindset now I need to come up with a better better word than that because when most people think of mindset they think of Carol Dweck’s

growth versus fixed mindset now what I’m talking about when I talk about mindset I’m talking about what’s going through your mind just before and during the ricks these bottom line that our bodies we’re evolutionarily not wired to want to feel uncomfortable he’s on the Serengeti 250,000 years ago when he first officially became Homo sapiens and long before that when we’re just animals if we were uncomfortable if we were in pain what was likely to follow was death so our survival distinct is incredibly powerful but thankfully we have this thing up here called the cerebral cortex this thing up front called the prefront cortex that separates us from animals that enables us to make choices so even though you might be hurting you have the capacity to say no I’m going to push through this and so so a key part of this is having a mindset plan in the race so this is about what you’re going to think about it and this is a little different than focusing

but it’s similar but it’s more like mental focus and and what involves is what kind of things do you want to say to yourself that will either keep you going or pushing harder because I remember when I first got back into triathlon in 2019 after well 11 year break and before that I’ve been doing Iron Man since 70.3 but I had no clue at all about swimming and that that what I noticed was that I felt like I could swim okay but I wasn’t able to push that push those liners and so I remember the first couple of races I did coming back and I had hadn’t been swimming very long I didn’t swim at all in 11 years literally and and I couldn’t like I just wasn’t enjoying myself so I was just going along going like man this is no fun I can’t wait to like get out of year why do I do this well that was incredibly self-defeating and I know a lot of traffic to think that sort of thing especially if they’re not swimmers and so over time and especially the last year so when I’ve really been

improving and also starting to challenge at the highest level of my age group that what can I do well first of all my whole mindset has changed about swimming because since discovering you and form swim goggles and that’s not a plug for either you I just love you and those the goggles both I actually I’d love to swim now

this morning at 5.30 AM in the heavy rain and the cold I enjoy it and so so and that’s translating to my races where it’s no longer drudgery to be there waiting to get on the bike and on the run and so and so what I think about is changed dramatically but now where I’m moving toward is having what’s when I call an aggressive mindset so and that’s where I don’t naturally just go fast I need to I need to like really push myself and so I need to be constantly going let’s go push push push push so for for the super spread again 400 meters it’s it’s all just like let’s go let’s chart let’s attack let’s go at because my mind has to tell my body to keep going when I’m suck and wind out there for and even though even though swims only like four or five minutes it’s really a pleasant and in the Olympic distance which again nine 10 so miles a mile it’s it’s a different mindset is for me I’ve got this mantra like long and strong and maybe I need to change that to fast and strong in terms of cadence

but it’s it’s the ideas that I’m constantly using my my mind my evolved brain if you will to tell my primitive brain that we’re not going to die and I need to keep going and then I’m choosing to do this because if you if your primitive brain hears that oh we’re not going to die and and and we’re actually doing this for on purpose then it’s going to go Oh I don’t need to hit I don’t need to trigger the survival instinct and so and then you can push the limits because

there is a lot left fuel and then fuel the tank and we might have talked about this in a in a past show but but really being very deliberate about what do you want to focus on what do you want to think about during the swim

that that reminds me of when if you’re underwater let’s say surfing you get held down and you’re still held you’re getting held down and you’re starting to run out of air when you start to get that sort of gulp that that reaction you’ve got something like you’re only halfway there you’ve still got 50% of the oxygen you need to to survive and it’s probably the same thing when it comes to pushing yourself and and and and trying to get the most out of yourself that you can it’s like you’re only just getting started we often give up too early we think I know this is this is hard I can’t possibly go any further but no doubt that you can and that sort of mindset and knowing first of all you’ve got the choice and you’re in control of that is a big step yeah so some of the clients I work with when I tell the story about there’s always fuel in the tank and there’s a ton of research on this by the way they go oh my gosh because because typically in the past if you don’t know that this

fuel in the tank you figure you’re just blown you’re done and of course then that the natural reaction is to either slow down or stop but if you’re hurting and you’re three-quarters of the race and and you go oh Jim said the still in the tank oh yeah so I’m going to tap into that now and the way you tap into that that physical fuel is with your mind because if you don’t have to tap into it then your body’s just going to go you know we might have fuel there but we’re going to keep it just in case because we don’t know how long this is going to be and so so really being very deliberate about what you’re going to say to yourself and you can’t just decide as you jump into the water in a race you’ve got to practice it in the pool in open water and find out what works and then use that if you’re doing intervals you’re constantly going push it you know the back the back 50 of the back 25 of 50s it’s like push it push it go go go and it’s amazing the difference because

you’re you’re basically commanding your body to keep going when it really doesn’t want to

and I had a swimmer ask they have a race coming up in two weeks time had a swimmer that I’m coaching ask all right what should I focus on in the lead up to the to this event I said every time you’re in training and you’re doing anything that’s roughly race pace I want you to just picture yourself there what’s it feel like what are the surroundings just forget you’re in the pool right now just pictures you’re in the open water and you are maybe bringing home that last 200 whatever it might be but I find that’s that can help you get much more comfortable and I know we kind of moving on to a almost a different subject in a way it’s like visualization but it’s it’s very much about just being in that situation and practicing it and that’s that’s how you’re going to know what works for you whether it’s long and strong or whether it’s just push push push that’s when you start to get a handle on it. Yeah

visualization the most powerful mental tool there is and in the in the weeks leading up to races if I even if I don’t know the venue I’ll just I’ll just look on on Google Maps and try to imagine it and then once I get to the race like the world championships or nationals I’ll get there three or four days before to to adjust and I’m doing like three or four times a day of seeing myself in the race key parts of it basically what you’re doing is you’re programming your mind to how you want to think how you want to feel so when you get to the race you just run the program you don’t need to make any choices should I push harder No I’m going to push harder because that’s program in my brain through the imagery

and if you want to dig a bit deeper on that topic we’ve recorded a number of episodes so we’ll link to that in the in the show notes as well the the last thing I want to touch on here is having a reality check so when we’re talking about topics beforehand one of the ones that I thought would be good is just having a reality check on where you’re currently out with your with your swimming because I mentioned this on a podcast a little while ago but basically I was using the EO swim better devices that almost the power meters for your hand and I and my propulsive forces were very low it was like 20 to 30 percent very low that the best that I’ve seen is 75 percent from Roland Schumann who’s in an Olympic level freestyle now it doesn’t mean that you can’t swim fast if your propulsive forces are in the 20 to 30 but it means that you are either

so I was very much downward so I first read that and went haha yeah the devices aren’t working it’s not me like I’m a I’m a good swimmer that’s there’s no way I’m in the 20s to 30s and then I use the devices with some other people test it there in the 40s 50s and and so on so I’m like all right maybe they’re not they’ve let it break imagine where I’d be if single did just maybe I don’t know but I’ve got to get me one of them

what’s and there’s there’s more to it than just the direction

if you are 20% propulsive and 60% downwards well there’s a big opportunity there to just be more effective with what’s happening so what I’ve when I finally came to terms with what the numbers are actually telling me I thought all right well that pretty clearly means I’m just putting too much force in a downwards direction through my catch so what I what I’ve been working on is changing that just relaxing more as I’m reaching forwards and really trying to bring my shoulder up near the side of the face shoulder near my cheek and then just relaxing through there working on the the catch in a better direction and it’s taking a while to to get there but it is improved it’s improved that a lot and my speeds come up with it so that kind of reality check first of all it’s like no can’t be it but then after took me a few weeks really to come to terms with it but yeah when you and then then you can I could actually start to make some changes to it and the same thing goes with maybe some race results

if you look at and go yeah I was fit I was healthy I thought I did everything well and my my bike was incredibly slow it’s like as much as that can can hurt to just sit down and take responsibility for where you currently at it’s the thing that’s going to help you move forwards yeah it’s so important in triathlon to be grounded in reality because you can’t fake triathlon there’s some other sports where where you can sort of fake it for a little while if you really good at it technically but you can only go as fast in the in the water on the bike in the run as you’re capable of running both physiologically genetically to a degree for sure and then in terms of your fitness and so so it’s it’s really important and nobody likes to admit that they’re not very good in in some area of triathlon but I can assure you I have to face the ugly reality despite my really good results you know there there are always there are a couple there’s one guy in the US and like I mentioned this French guy

who who swept both races in Panadietra by all a lot who they’re they’re just they’re just genetic freaks and

that’s my hope or I’ll stay healthy and yeah but but you know my but ultimately all we can do is except where we are and for me my goal is always to just get better close the gap and and the the last couple of years as I’ve as I’ve gotten back into triathlon the last I guess four years now the gaps are closing but it’s because I look at my weaknesses these people say well you should be a du athlete just give up swimming because duathlons it’s like run bike run so you it’s like it’s I think a pretty even balance whereas with with triathlon biking way more important and in terms of the amount of time you do it but for me the challenge is overcoming my weaknesses and it’s like I’ve always been one of the fastest guys in my age group on the run but for me the challenge is can I close the gap between where I am from the top guys in the swim the bike and I’ve actually seen that and and so yes it’s a bloat of ones ego to have to say like boy you know like like my power numbers on the bike

they’re not pretty I’m not a power guy but I’m proved my power by like 30 40 Watts over the last what from from last year to this year and so then it’s like whoa I’m starting to get in the game and it showed where I was fifth on the bike in the super sprint whereas in the in past races I’d be like you know you know 10 15th and then I’m playing even more ketchup so so I’m a big believer in testing which in fact next week my coaches have me do some really unpleasant testing in the pool and in the in the on the bike trainer and then on the run and so you know basically what it does it provides a baseline and what’s nice about that is having a clear sense of reality where I am and I think there’s a couple of areas where it’s not gonna be pretty but then hopefully I focus on those weaknesses I get I test again in let’s say January and we see improvement and you know improvement is one of the one of the main motivators for me I just want to get better or you know maybe in my age

it’s not getting faster it’s getting less slow so than everybody else but the idea but it’s basically like improving and so that’s an incredibly satisfying thing to see I I I got assessed I faced reality I’m not a good swimmer and then and I need to change that mentality too because maybe I’m actually not a bad swimmer anymore maybe I’m an okay one that’s a whole mental thing as well but but then I put in the work I get retested and I’m faster and I’m stronger and it’s like you know that’s like validation for all that hard work you put in and it doesn’t always work that way unfortunately you know it doesn’t always work that way but I mean that’s it’s where the the fun is it’s being able to see opportunities where you can get better and trying to figure out what you need to do we’re in Thailand recently for a swim camp there and me and one of the other coaches Mitch were doing a training session and one of the other coaches Sam he he got on the stopwatches and was

running us through this main set which was like a sprint set it was what was at 25 trying to remember I think was 50 diet max followed by 125 easy and then at 25 dive max followed by 100 easy and that was maybe five or six times through and Sam was like giving us feedback and it’s rare that I’d have someone on the on the stopwatches giving actual times or actually giving feedback and what I realized there is that it’s just so helpful to have someone with experience who knows what they’re talking about giving giving feedback to show where you’re at because basically it’s like you need to get your rating up your stroke rates was like eight low 80s and I need to get it up to around 100 so I I managed to get it up to I think like 100 105 for these sprints and my times came down by about a second in the 50s and maybe half a second in the 25s which is which is a fair bit for me and I was able to just make some changes like trying to go over the water a bit quicker so just faster over the top

not that much quicker underneath so I was able to do that and then I was able to work the turns so just having someone with experience actually giving that feedback made a huge difference and it’s just something that doesn’t often happen for me because I’m usually the one coaching but it made a big big difference and that was the reality check I needed there to go right there’s still a lot I can improve on I just need to get the feedback right right and I’m going to invite you to to California if you if you would for a few weeks so you can coach me up front and personal but but anyway so yes I mean having that data having that perspective I mean I have a coach he’s not near me unfortunately but he’s a PhD and exercise physiology his name’s Dr. Greg Rhodes and he’s phenomenal in terms of he looks at my data and he says this is what we need to do and you know just doing you know you know these days you can go online and get all kinds of swim workouts but it’s not

very helpful if you have no idea what the heck you’re doing and putting it all together into a program and that’s where you come in and that’s that’s why having a coach I find it so valuable being able to provide the insights and be able to analyze the data and know what it means then what to do with

with being able to admit I need to work on these areas because it seems a lot of people there was a book of a while ago titled something like like focus on your strengths or live for your strengths or something and the idea was that you should focus on your strengths because that’s those that’s what makes you strengths totally disagree because the fact is is that you let’s say this is this is as fast you can possibly go on the bull and and if it’s your strength then you’re already here so you can put a lot of time into it and you get this much better be focused on your weaknesses you got a lot of room for improvement right and so you put in a lot of time to that you get up to here but you just you just improve this much versus that much and so so certainly for me my running you know these days it’s I just want to maintain my running speed as much I can but certainly the pool and then and as well in the bike that’s where I’m going to make my gains because I’ve got so much room to play with

and that’s frustrating but it’s also cool to see improvements in the different areas that

can help anyone who is looking to get to work with someone like yourself on the mental aspect of their racing has best way to get in contact with you where can I find you well they they just think these days called the internet I think you’ve probably heard of it and and websites and and so I’ve website is a doctor DR Jim Taylor dot com doctor Jim Taylor dot com and I’m also on I’m Instagram Facebook and LinkedIn what’s the other one and Twitter so you can go there and I’ve got I’ve got all kinds like 95% of everything I’ve ever written is up there for free and I’ve got and my blog I’ve got a triathlon category and then if people do want to reach out to me I have a menu item that says something like one on one coaching but more than anything for me it’s I just love helping people and it’s been really gratifying be after being on a couple of your episodes I’m getting you know I get emails from people all over the world and in some cases just asking a question or thanking me

but in some cases where I spend focus time on on them because especially with like panicking and we did a show I don’t know maybe last year on panicking of the water and and that’s we’re seeing that more and more and even even with some really high-level athletes who have never had an issue then all of a sudden they do a race and they’re just like freaking out so anyway I guess my main mission in all my work is to spread the word that the mind matters and that the mind can be trained just like the buy it’s not a mystery it’s not weird and it’s an essential part it’s the last piece of the puzzle but it shouldn’t be the last piece bubble puzzle it should be just along along with technique and tactics and conditioning it should just be a piece of the puzzle that you focus on in order to be the best swimmer triathlete you can be

and I had a Australian summer on recently a young guy called Flynn Southern and he was he was talking about it World World Champs trial so to make the Australian team to compete at World Champs he his first day he had the 200 freestyle didn’t race well he finished what was he just in the top eight something like that or maybe fifth but he was expected to do pretty well didn’t have a great swim is like I want this meet to be over this is you know I’ve got 100 to go but I just I know I’m not racing well so let’s just get over and done with and he sat down with his coach and his coach said look you’ve got nothing to lose I want you to go out there in this 100 free swim like you’ve got nothing to to lose and he ended up doing his fastest time first time he swam under 48 seconds ended up coming second Carl Chalmers made the team and then went on to win a gold medal in the 4-0 one at at world champs and I spent especially at that level it is very much about mind it is like those guys it’s it’s often

the mind that can determine whether or not they’re going to to do well so it’s a it’s an important piece of the the puzzle and it’s one that can be easy to easy to forget if we not not conscious of it not aware of it so that’s why I really like doing these episodes every couple of months just to bring that to our attention and to to cover some new things that that you’re coming up with or even just revisit things that you’ve spoken about for a long time because it’s like with swimming technique that all that information that knowledge is there but not everyone knows it not everyone’s doing that on a daily basis so it’s good just to get that that reminder so guess what I’m getting at is thank you for being on the podcast I really appreciate you coming on so regularly and sharing all of your expertise always fun Brenton I learned so much from you and I’m happy to give back to helping you be as successful as you can be as well thanks thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast

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