So by the end of your day too, which is kind of the fourth day for me, I just had been putting my times into a little spreadsheet and it had taken nine seconds off the 100 meters intervals from the first day. And that’s, yeah, as I say, I’m not particularly fast, but that really blew my mind because I’d spent so long not really getting any faster. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that helped swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Peter Bloor and you are a Brit located in Vietnam and you’ve recently gone through our five day catch challenge and in the comments you had some pretty good results. I think it was after day two and I thought I’d be really good to get you on to talk about what you’ve changed to make such an improvement. So first of all,

welcome and can you tell everyone listening a little bit of your background on how you got into swimming and why you’re swimming at the moment? Sure, thanks Brenton. So I moved into an apartment about two years ago and it had a pool and I’ve never been a strong swimmer at all. I would never swim freestyle for example, it was always breaststroke, paddling around and I thought it’d be a good opportunity to really learn how to swim. My wife then starts suggesting to triathlons and going in for Ironman because I’ve got a background with cycling and a bit of running. So yeah, just kind of took it from there and I spent about 18 months training. I was doing an 80-20 plan from Matt Fitzgerald depending if you you’re familiar with this whole kind of approach. Not too sure, what’s that about?

It’s just about doing 80% of your work below the lactate threshold so most of it’s quite easy and then you 20% of the time you’re above that doing intervals and all the rest of it so that applies in cycling, swimming and running. So I was following his plan just basically just trying to make sure that I had the endurance to be able to do a half Ironman. So 1900 meters it seemed ridiculously long at first. So I wasn’t really focusing on the the technique so much just about trying to make sure I could do it. The Ironman because of Covid the Ironman kept getting cancelled and delayed. So I’ve done these 19-week build-up plans three times now and the event just kept on it’s honestly so disheartening. We’ve just had one recently so it’s supposed to be May, again that’s the third I got cancelled. It’s now done for August and I’m not really that confident it’s going to happen again but anyway. So I would watch

your videos actually and I would try and take that into the pool but then just go through the normal plan as it was in the as it was in the plan that was given. So not really doing the drills not really kind of focusing that much on on it and that’s that’s something I kind of really learned from this this catch program is that doing the drills really really makes a difference like having the intention to kind of do it using with with your mind is all well and good but it just doesn’t give you the same kind of isolation of the the different parts of the technique. So yeah I really realised that and then yeah after so after that about 18 months I that that last Ironman got cancelled and I thought I’d use time to try and work on the swim because that’s by far my weakest discipline of the three. So then I saw just coincidentally your your course come up and kind of went for it also partly because I’ve been sort of watching

your videos for free for so long I’ll have a photo of it so you’d probably deserved whatever it was and I saw someone in the comments saying that they were going to do that you know repeat the days and that that kind of felt right for me so I did each day twice and so by the end of your day too which is kind of the fourth day for me I just had been putting my times into a little spreadsheet and it yeah it’d taken nine seconds off the the 100 meters intervals from the first day and that’s yeah as I say I’m not particularly fast but that’s that really blew my mind because I’d spent so long not really getting any faster and then did so then obviously that was a few that was a couple of weeks back and I’ve now finished it by the end I think it was 11 or 12 seconds but a big part of that was just not just the time it was the kind of energy so not feeling so tired afterwards feeling more comfortable rather than doing it kind of you

know muscles a bit more relaxed and less tired afterwards I haven’t really been done any endurance swim since part because it’s not that phase in the plan and I just didn’t get around to it but I’m really interested to see what effect it will have on the on the kind of average speed for those longer swims but yeah just really really impressive results I thought. And one of the things you mentioned in the in the comments was that you this is like the second day or perhaps four days into it if you’re doubling up the days but you didn’t feel like you were faster but when you look at your times you were you were quicker can you explain did it feel any different or did it or it felt the same but the times were just quicker?

It’s quite it’s kind of difficult to remember I guess the day two I think was the one where you kind of go in you put the brakes on and then down and that definitely I noticed that a lot in the the final drills so you kind of catch position just being better yeah feeling better I guess not yeah not feeling so much faster but definitely less tired and that was throughout throughout the intervals I guess so I had more gas to give in the final one than I did on the first day and would have done in the past and so on as well. I mean the other just thinking about it I haven’t reached the end in day five the one that had the most effect on me I think was just the importance of slow to fast um I think that’s the way you phrased it but you know I think I’ve pretty much been going through just as beginners do you know pushing down on the water instead of waiting for the engine to go up and but my general stroke was pretty even in terms of

the motion and then this has completely changed the way that works and so I found that it’s probably meant I’ve put in less energy into the kicks um my kicks I’ve got that thing of runners like heavy legs so kicks has always been an issue in fact for the longest time I was faster with a pull boy than when I was kicking which is pretty depressing um I know a lot of people are

um and but yeah like as I say so moving from slow to fast it’s felt like it’s completely changed the the timing and I don’t know the way the stroke feels and maybe that’s a spoiler for people who haven’t got there yet but yeah that the day five was really big for me as well ah that’s good and so for you and what we’re talking about with slow to fast is um essentially a lot of people will turn their arms over at a constant speed like they’re turning the pedals on a bike but in swimming it’s it should be slow to fast so when you reach forward you begin to catch move through that a bit slower than you do out the back of the stroke and um and for you was it more that taking your time out the front and then accelerating through the back part that changed it or was it just that it gave you felt like you had a little bit more more time um to like to to reach forward so it kept your heart rate down felt easier was it changing the speed in

both ends of the stroke or in just one more in the in the the second half honestly yeah so more just the acceleration out the back um it meant I was able to deliberately push us fully through the up through the back as well and I think particularly when I was getting tired in the past that would have been the form just falling into pieces so probably wasn’t pushing all the way out whereas now that’s that’s just front and center in my mind um and and then definitely to just the tiredness and the energy um so I don’t know I don’t know the numbers but I whether it feels like half as difficult but it definitely feels easier um and you know this they’re not sprinting so the numbers that I’m kind of going off when I I’m just been doing your drills kind of thing is what I would call kind of zone three so a little bit above threshold um and so yeah faster than I would do for for an Ironman but not definitely not sprinting and uh yeah it really feels a lot

easier and that that’s kind of like that’s part of what I wanted yeah oh that and it’s that’s such a good um good thing to hear and I think because I was thinking about okay why why people getting really good results with this with this catch challenge like it’s super simple and but I think having that pretty much one focus a day um is is the way to to go um because if you’re trying to do two or three things sometimes that’s just overwhelming and so with one thing at a time keep it really simple um for me that feels like um why we’ve had had such good results with it what do you for you what do you think it it was that um that helped you sort of make those changes just from someone doing the course I absolutely agree yeah it’s gonna have to isolate the um the each different part of it um because as I say none of actually I think I’ve probably seen most of what you said in that course in your videos already um I’m pretty sure

I mean maybe not the slow to fast thing but maybe I haven’t got through the to that part of your videos yet but it was one of the four hundred years yeah got two young kids so I’ll get there um it was yeah the isolation and doing the drills so um I would really recommend everyone get the snorkel as well for me that um that just took the breathing out of the equation and so it was even more so kind of just isolated on getting those um those kind of positions right and getting the different parts of the stroke right um yeah so I’ll just the isolation I think that’s absolutely what it was for me yeah I think a snorkel is good to use because I mean the breathing is the thing that can bring in so many other flaws into the stroke because often turn too far or you know you just sort of it really takes the focus off what’s happening in the water so snorkel makes a makes a big difference and when you first started um swimming or swimming consistently about 18 months ago

with your with your technique did you have um sort of much an idea of what it was that you should be doing did you um get any coaching as a kid or did you come into it with a bit of a blank slate and then you started watching some some videos the second um it’s one of those things I’ve noticed so I’ll I might I spend that amount of time um swimming 18 months probably three times a day sorry three times a week I’d say at least as part of the plan and then kids guys who just learned when they were kids and I like nailing my times on on Strava like people I know here who barely ever swim but they just got the muscle memory and the technique from when they were a kid um and it was yeah it was that I didn’t have any any coach here and I like I say knew how to swim but never did swim and um so I just I kind of went to YouTube there’s not really uh that many coaches that I know here anyway um or that I’m aware of so yeah I just kind of tried to do

on YouTube and it’s as I say it’s I think it’s what you said um trying to I’d watch the videos during the day maybe thinking I’d go and swim at night but I’d have three things in my mind that I wanted to improve so got right into do this and work on that and hire both thing and you want that um and yeah I think it ended up being just not really not really effective yeah yeah that’s it because often I’ll have people who come along to clinics and um that watched a lot of videos and they’re trying to do so many things that at once and some of it’s just like they don’t even need to worry about it’s like let’s say it’s the train tracks right you’re trying to stay in um in line with your shoulders when you enter if someone’s already doing that and they’re really hyper focused on it it’s like well you could spend your your time focusing on something else and it’s um yeah and so you want to make sure it’s right for you and it’s specific to you

and um yeah but I think you know with the catch you know if you get that right to me it’s it’s the 80 20 of your stroke if you have a good catch um it makes such a difference across the board and so I think that’s why um you can see such big improvements like you had which I think was um was fantastic so um so going forwards in terms of um uh racing with your training do you you are you doing some um sessions where it’s you’re going it around you know like one and a half to two k maybe broken up into intervals where you’re looking to maintain that sort of race pace um if you do ever get to do your half line man um yeah so I haven’t I’m supposed to have started the plan again or for for august but like I said the motivation is a little bit lower at the moment but so I’ve kind of been working through the the five day catch thing again um I think I’ll do that for this week and then I actually joined the video membership of the um

of your kind of effort swimming site so I’m planning to kind of use that and go through some more things um the way I picture doing it now is once I get into the plan again there’s my warm-up should probably normally about 500 meters three to 500 meters um I’ll do drills from from the site or I mean some from this this program I guess but some just from the site as well ymca and that kind of thing um and then go on with the the normal things and yeah sometimes it’s intervals sometimes it’ll just be you know a big swim in zone two sometimes it’s uh mixed intervals there’s a little bit of variety going through it um that yeah we’ll be fine of Matt of Matt Fitzgelstin as well that 80-20 so it’s nice to be able to kind of mix them up I guess um through the first part focusing on the form and then the endurance for the second part or whatever yeah that’s good and that’s why I sort of made it that way too is because

um people like yourself you’ve got a coach or you’ve got swim programs that you’re already doing and so you can often just get those technique changes to happen as part of the warm-up and um what I’m in the middle of creating at the moment is um you might have seen me mention it but like an eight-week course kind of like the five-day catch challenge where it’s going to go through the whole stroke so we’ll work on on body position and kick and rotation all those sorts of things just in an eight-week program but you’ll just have a short warm-up that you can include as part of your session so it’ll sort of cover cover all those other things and I’m sure you’re about to find a couple seconds here and there as well so um yeah in the next probably two weeks or so it should be up in the membership which um which should be good because I’ve had quite a few people ask about all right can we do it for like body position

can we do it for um the other things as well and um yeah and so that’s um that’s what’s going to be uh be next because oh yeah often there’s a lot of time we found in those things as well awesome yeah I look forward to that for sure cool and uh I just yeah thank you very much for um for being on the podcast and uh fingers crossed that come August you can you can get your race on I feel for I mean I think we’ve got um so this coming weekend there’s the first Ironman to be held in Australia since since last March I think it is and um and our state here in Melbourne um by the time we were recording this um so our state in Victoria so we’ve all been locked out of Queensland so I’ve had friends that have have trained for a very long time for this event and they can’t go so um yeah it’s uh I can understand the pain in a way but I haven’t done the training for it but uh yeah it sucks but fingers crossed you know you can get it done

soon oh no that’s one cheers 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