A Different Approach To Technique For Triathletes Stuck In Their Swimming With Eney Jones

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Eney Jones is coming back for the third time to share what she has been working with recently and about trying a different approach for triathletes who needs help with their swimming.

01:31 Origin Of Phrases That Swim Coaches Have Used
08:26 Core Connection
10:18 Working With Triathletes
12:43 The Mental Aspect
13:41 Aloha!
15:54 Alternate Ego
17:26 You Either Win Or You Learn
19:28 Between The Stimulus And Response
21:24 Going Back To The Fundamentals Of Breathing
22:49 Connecting To Your Breath
24:37 Shells And Rocks
32:36 One Size Doesn’t Fit All

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Transcription:

Brenton: So Eney, welcome back to the podcast. This is your third time on here.

Eney: Thank you. I wish I were there, but this is second best.

Brenton: Yeah, well it’s just starting to heat up here and you’re starting to get pretty cold by the sounds of it. But one of the things that’s happening is you’re coming over here… Well, coming to Noosa for our Noosa Camp in May, which will be awesome. And you said it’s your first time visiting Noosa?

Eney: Yeah, I’m excited to go to Noosa, I’ve always wanted to go there. And the closest I’ve been is a friend of mine is from Noosa and makes yogurt here called Noosa. So that’s the only thing that I’ve had, the only Noosa experience I’ve had.

Brenton: Well yeah, it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s just such a good spot for swimming, so I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. And one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast today was just to see what you’ve been working on and researching because I think you’re probably the coach who I know that looks into things and loves to look back at the history and where things come from. And there’s been a couple of things lately where you’ve found the origin of some of the typical cues or the phrases that coaches have used across the years. And it’s given you a much better understanding of why some people… Or why we use the cues that we do. But a lot of the times it’s not actually helping the swimmer. So what have been some of the recent ones that you’ve sort of come across?

Eney: So looking at some of the etymology of swimming, the first one that I came across was lie down, look flat, swim downhill, you have to press down to lift your legs. And I had somebody come in the flume at CU and they wanted me to teach Navy Seal swimming, and I said, “No, I don’t know how to do that.” And he said, “Watch these videos.” And I said, “Are you trying to be a Navy Seal?” And he said, “No, I am a finalist to be on a reality TV show to pretend I’m a Navy Seal, so I need to learn their swimming style.” And Navy Seals are in the water for hours upon hours and they’re trying not to get shot. They’re trying not to be seen. So they really want to be low in the water. Most of the people that I work with, the athletes are either open water swimmers or triathletes and they want the fastest, easiest, not the hardest.

Eney: So with water being 800 times denser than air, the lower you are in the water, the harder it is. And I was so happy to hear some of this Navy Seal stuff because I had heard coaches say swim down hill and I thought it was to denote ease, but it’s actually from Navy Seals. And when I watched the videos and the Navy Seal said, “You’ve got to press down to lift your legs.” And I wanted to say to him, “No, my legs are connected with my core.” So if I want to lift my legs, it doesn’t matter where my chest is. But I’ve always said stretch your chest. It is a press, but it’s also a chest like a proud superhero chest. When you do that, it actually lifts your shoulders higher and makes sighting easier.

Eney: The other one recently I’ve come across is from Red Cross, and they taught people to cup their hands, which you lose surface area and now the research has come out, you want 10 degrees between your fingers so you’re moving more water and you’re not using energy to cup. They also teach breathe back into the pocket because they thought it was a safe place for people to breathe not getting water in their mouth, but what it does is it either causes people’s arm to rise so they’re in their shoulder or they spread their legs and their arm goes to the side and their legs spread. So looking back is not where you want to be breathing, you want to be breathing in the front part of your strike.

Eney: And we talked earlier before we were on air about how sometimes anything’ll work, and I’ve had some athletes do Oceanside, and I that I will sometimes teach them to breathe back because when you’re trying to catch a wave coming in, you need to look back to see, to practice the timing. And to me that always seems like a given growing up in Florida, but working with a lot of people in Colorado, they’ve never been in the surf, they’ve never been in the waves. So you know, that’s the only time I will teach that.

Eney: The other misnomer is from Total Immersion, the lie on your side to look up and press down. And to me, he got people to relax, but it’s hard on your shoulder to press down. It also sometimes with people I had worked with creates almost a vertigo when they breathe and go look all the way up to the ceiling and come back down. Then they get out in a triathlon and they’re like, “Oh my God, I’m so dizzy.” And I’m like, “Look at your eye pattern, it’s going way up and then way down.” So there’s benefits to it, he does get people to relax, but there’s different ways.

Eney: And looking at where some of these phrases have come from going, “Wait, it’s time for us and me to put our stuff out there.” Because seeing where some of these phrases come from, swimming is just science. Like Doc Counsilman used to say, “Press the T in the science of swimming.” And that’s true, but it’s actually a press and a stretch so that your heart is kind of forward, it lifts your shoulders out of the water and then it engages your core. Like if a boxer is going to punch you, if they punch straight out, it’s just shoulder. But if you punch forward and down and lift that opposite leg, you’re engaging your core.

Eney: So there’s so many sports that have similarities and so many sports, it does come down to your hips. That’s where it comes down to, your abs. I’ve seen a lot of people when they put on a buoy, they swim like they’ve… Or core shorts, they swim like they’ve had an epidural from the waist down. And to me, I think, “Wait, that’s where your power is.” The reason I like my buoy is you have to squeeze it to navel swivel to get your hips out of the way and you have to incorporate the… I always call it surf paddling and salsa dancing, but you have to start engaging that salsa.

Eney: And with a lot of triathletes, mostly men, they’re tight in their psoas, hip flexors, lower lumbar and sacroiliac. So just recently teaching people how to relax that, I’ve had people pull with their ankles crossed just to get the relief in their sacroiliac, their lower lumbar, and even start to move their hips out of the way. And it’s even like Mike Bottom, the coach of Michigan, when he used to explain hip drive, I don’t think people knew it’s like golf. So much of your power, even with your catch, comes from your hips. It’s not just reaching forward, it’s that hip hike of the opposite hip and that naval swivel to get that hip out of the way to get more length in the back.

Brenton: Yeah. And that’s one thing that… Like when people sending their videos for me to analyze, oftentimes I have to start with just that core connection or getting the core involved. And we see their inner thighs and their knees sometimes can be very far apart, and getting that connection, or that core, to be used, it’s not going to happen when the knees are that far apart. So what do you like to use? You mentioned get them to put a pool boy in and to cross their ankles is one way to feel it.

Eney: Yeah. I also am a big fan of DMC fins, and they’re Australian. They’re not too long, so they don’t mess up the kick timing. They’re made of silicone, so they’re heavy. They teach people awareness. So I will have people pull with a band and fins on to actually learn to power from their hips. And then a more advanced drill is to take the buoy out and have fins and the band to keep them almost like a tail-like mermaid or merman movement to get some power from their hips. And that’s another misnomer that I’ve heard in the past about stop moving your hips, lie flat. And I think, “No, no, no, there’s so much power in your hips.” And it’s really an easy way to gain power without a lot of effort.

Brenton: Yeah, exactly, it’s such a small movement through the hips, but you can get so much from it. And when I was looking into it, it’s called the Serape Effect, which is when… It’s the lengthening of those muscles through the torso, and it’s when those muscles contract and they shorten that you get that snap back effect. And for very little effort you can really have a lot of output there. And you notice that when people are able to make that change from being not connected through the body or through the hips to then having that connection, it makes a big, big difference. And you’ve been working with a professional triathlete guy, Sam Long, and working on a number of these different things. And we were talking earlier about what some of those things were for him and those different ways he had to think about his stroke. Do you want to talk a bit about what you’ve been doing with Sam?

Eney: Yeah, so Sam is an amazing athlete and he’s got an unbelievable engine. Nd he hasn’t really been swimming that long, but he needs to go from a 57 Iron Man swim to about an easy 50 to be able to win the big ones. And with he’s got a great mind body connection and once he feels something, he’s great at clearing and letting go and not thinking about it. So with him he was breathing way too far back so he wasn’t getting power in his catch on the opposite side in his lat. So we’ve been working on him lifting his chin, keeping his neck neutral, heart forward, and even little drills like having a paddle with no strap in front of your head, so you lift your chin, breathe, your head’s angled like it’s on a pillow and then you put it back. We’ve also been tying his legs together and having him cross his ankles when he pulls, and then doing more of a propeller kick to even get more with his lower abs because he was not using them at all.

Eney: Also with his feet, he had a tendency to stabilize with his feet pointing out. And I think his feet are, I don’t know what it is in Australia, but it’s a size 13 US. So they were these huge things to the side that were just stopping. So putting him in find has just… It’s not like the old school thing where they used to make us actually stand on the front of our feet to get the stretch, but it’s teaching him where his toes… It’s adding awareness of teaching him where his toes are pointed. It’s not like he’s even using the fins, but he’s using it for awareness and then even a little more core power. And it seems to be helping.

Eney: We’ve also been putting him in the flume at CU and we make small changes and he incorporates it and then I turn the flume on faster than he can swim or the pace he wants to swim and we can monitor when his stroke breaks down, like how long he can keep it up. And what he’s found in the endless pool is the hardest thing for him has really been the mental aspect. Because when you’re in a pool, you get to flip wall-to-wall, you see people, when you’re in the ocean, there’s beautiful sites and it’s almost like solitary confinement. And I relate it to… There’s a yoga story about a dog chewing a bone, and at first the dog chews it, but then he starts chewing on the inside of his cheek and he gets that yummy blood and then he gets so much more into it.

Eney: So with Sam, one of the big things we started working on recently is breathing. He had never… I realized I had never taught it. Most of the sports he did, it came naturally. But he told me he’s even starting to take some of the breathing stuff that we’ve worked on to the bike and the run. For instance, we started with the word Aloha because you know he loves Kona. The word Aloha, A-L-O means presence, and then ha is breath. So even that the word alone is something to focus on. And we’ve been trying to put more commas in his breath, meaning people think you can’t control your autonomic nervous system, you’re breathing in your heart rate, but by slowing down your breathing, you slow down your heart rate. But by putting a comma after you breathe in and then you take a pause and then you exhale, and this is the biggest pause because you’ve let all your air out, you don’t immediately exhale. They found that this is a good place to reset your breath. You have nothing right there and you stay with that nothing.

Eney: So the breadth has really helped him just even focus on more of that because really in a sport like triathlons it can be a moving meditation, but we’ve kind of lost control over our thoughts and we go to the next great thing and I get… I don’t know if you get, I get a lot of runners and they say, “I just want swimming to feel like running. I don’t want to be thinking.” And I said, “That’s what I want you to do too. I want you to swim with your heart and not your head. Press and lift your heart forward, slow down all the thoughts in your head by relaxing your breathing.” So it’s been kind of interesting how one thing then helps something else that you didn’t imagine it to help.

Brenton: Yeah, that’s a real… It’s an easy trap to get caught in, overthinking your swimming. And especially when there’s so much to think about and… You do need to have some things in mind when you are changing your stroke. And what I’ve tried to convey at clinics now is that when I get people to do drills, think about it, use your thinking brain. When it comes to swimming and translating that drill into the swim, go a bit more by feel because you’re not going to lose your timing, you’re not going to be as tense and rigid, you’ll be able to relax a bit more. And just trying to have that comparison there of your thinking brain and your feeling brain.

Eney: Yeah, so… And he’s got a good body mind connection. And as an athlete, he’s one of the biggest heart athletes I’ve ever seen. He loves it. He loves the people, he loves what he’s doing, he appreciates it. And I think that in that sense, no matter what his results, he’s already gotten it. You know, his exuberance carries over into people wanting that. Because I think people forget to have fun, they forget to realize how lucky they are, they forget to really enjoy it. And to really realize today I watched him… I made him watch kind of a religious video on Nick Foles, and he’s a quarterback here that had an injury and he said, “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me because it’s easy to be happy when I won the Lombardi trophy. But to me to realize this is part of the process. What am I learning from this? How can I keep moving forward?”

Eney: And I find it interesting because years ago one of my favorite books was called Red Gold and it was a Russian book on training techniques and they talked about having an alternate ego or naming yourself. You’d be The Brenton Ford. And Sam already does this, he calls himself… His race name is Big Unit, that’s what he calls himself. And you look through the years and Herschel Walker had multiple personalities and he said that really helped him because if he had a bad game he didn’t lose his self esteem. And just recently I was reading a book called Alter Ego and they talk about the same thing, how important it is to not be your performance. And I laugh that some great athletes have known this for so long, but now all the research is coming out saying it’s not who you are, name yourself for what your performance is and that way if you are retiring or if you have a bad race or a bad game, you can move on without losing your self esteem.

Eney: And you know, there’s the old adage that says you either win or you learn, and when you look back, and I’d be interesting to see with you, sometimes your best races are your worst performances because you learned the most, either about yourself or how to coach somebody because you would think you never would have this. There’s a woman here that used to be married to Dave Scott, Anna Scot and she was an amazing sprinter and she did a race in a cold lake in the mountains in a wetsuit. And her breathing was shallow, she actually was holding onto the kayak and she’s like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening to me. I’m Anna Scot.” But you know, she had to dial it in and get over herself. And I think that happens to so many of us where we think we’re, our performances are our history and we need to clear an experience and realize that each experience, not only can it help you as an individual, it can help you as a coach. Or it can even help you as a person realizing your reaction is super important.

Eney: There’s a guy named Viktor Frankl and he wrote Man’s Search for Meaning and he said between the stimulus and the response, there is time and stay there and figure out your response. And I think so many of us are emotional and reactive and we react without… Well not you, because I feel like you’re able to do this, but create your response and look at all your options. And I think it happens in open water swimming all the time where you have to go, “Wait a minute, this happened, but what are my options?” And there’s another great book out there called Mindset where it’s like if you have a fixed mindset, you don’t see… You want to have a growth mindset because there are so many options and you need to go, “Okay well what are they?” You’re never totally defeated in an Iron Man because it’s a long day and there’s a next step and you don’t know what’s going to happen with your competitor or yourself or the weather. And so to keep having a growth mindset where you assess what’s going on without a lot of emotion.

Eney: So the breathing has come up a lot. And I wanted to talk to you about that because I’ve been working with people, I had somebody come in yesterday and I said, “What I want you to do is go for a walk for 30 seconds and try not to think and just connect to your brain.” And he’s like, “I can do it when I’m walking. I can do it when I’m running.” I said, “But swimming?” “That’s where I’m struggling.” So we’ve been working on the commas, the slowing down of the breath, and sometimes having it be audible cues, sometimes having it be counting, sometimes having it be a mantra that just is soothing and relaxing.

Brenton: One of the things that we did in Thailand this year for our camps there was every morning session I had the group do their TheraBand stuff to warm up and then we’d do about 10 minutes of breathing exercises. And I’d always get them to finish on… The final breathing was basically just trying to reduce how many breaths cycles you were doing per minute. So just a long drawn out inhale, long drawn out exhale. And sometimes I get down to doing like two, three or four breaths per minute. That’s not many breasts per minutes, it’s really slowing the breathing cycle down. And what I found especially in the technique session that we did, but also for the sessions where we were working them pretty hard, they were in a really good head space there. I think they were able to swim center and then coming from that place that you were just talking about, that’s when you can really… I don’t know, You can just really perform a lot better when you’re centered and your breathing is controlled and you’ve got that in place.

Brenton: And so that’s something that I’m going to continue to do it at camps. And I think it’s so easy to just look at it and go, “Oh, it’s just breathing. It can’t really do that much for you.” But in reality, it is everything. You don’t breathe for two minutes and you’re going to be in trouble. Breathing really is everything. And if you come back to those fundamentals, I think there’s a lot that you can get from that.

Eney: No, and I used to teach a lot of yoga and one of… And I used to run a film festival and one year the film came called Doing Time, Doing Vipassana and a Vipassana is a silent meditation. So often when we have a thought, we attach emotion to it rather than it going by. So some of the things that I’ve looked into are having people even wear a snorkel in their car to a race just to slow down their breathing. Or when you scuba dive, just the sound of your own breath can be… I like that you smiled. But they can be super relaxing because we forget that you have everything you need and your breath is everything and you can relax it.

Eney: So even in a stressful situation to step back and connect to your breath and even when you’re in a wave and a big wave comes and go, “Wait, I have my breath, I can slow.” You can actually slow time down and just really compose yourself by creating that awareness. And I think that we forget, but in so many cultures and in so many different activities, like women having a baby and Lamaze, and we forget that swimming is a perfect activity to not only regulate your breath, but to slow it down and then also realize that you can control everything by the awareness of your breath to the awareness of your thoughts by just not giving it any emotion and clearing it and going on to the next thing.

Brenton: When we had the Hawaii camp this year, one of the things that I really enjoyed was you came to the pool and you’ve got two bags full of different things. You’ve got these shells and rocks and all this different stuff to use as teaching tools at the camp. And I like that you think out of the box and you’re always looking for new ways for people to learn or to bring awareness to these different aspects of their stroke. Can you talk about some of those things that we did in Hawaii? Like you had the rocks and you had those shells as well. What was the purpose of each of those things?

Eney: Yeah, so people are real connected to their hands and they think their hands are important. But really there’s more surface area in your forearms. So to engage your core and in open water you want a deeper catch. If you’re going to skip a rock, they found the angle of a rock to skip the most is 20 degrees. So depending on people’s mind, if they want an angle. But the rock actually makes them engage their catch a little bit lower and then set, some people say early vertical form, but I don’t usually say that because if people are collapsed in their chest, they end up in their traps in their shoulders rather than having their diaphragm stretched and lifted. So the rocks help lift, they help people with their catch, get the depth.

Eney: But then the next phase I call the power phase, and it’s at the shoulder and at the shoulder you want the happy family, you want the dad, the mom and the kid altogether, the shoulder, the elbow and the wrist. So having that weight in your hand is almost like throwing that rock back so then they can actually feel the weight in the rock. So it kind of teaches and heightens awareness.

Eney: I think I also brought some biscuit sand dollars and some shells because I was having trouble teaching split tempo. I get a lot of athletes that are super runners and they’re cyclists and they’re super methodical, having the same tempo through the air and the water. But it’s a very different… Water’s 800 times denser, so you can be much more deliberate underneath and faster through the air. So your tempo actually goes from slow to faster underneath and then through the air from slow to fast. So with these shells and biscuit sand dollars, you put them in your hands and it teaches that to people without them thinking because it fills up underneath and then it drains through the air. So when people are even trying to learn a gallop or to learn to not be so perfect and shoulder and trap driven and deltoid driven in the water, it kind of teaches it without even having to speak.

Eney: And it’s helped me because I’ve worked with people from all over the world and sometimes language becomes a barrier. So if I can teach feel without saying something, once they feel it, they’ve got it and they might put their own words to it. But tools like that, and I know sometimes people think they need a really expensive swim machine, but I’ll even have people put a cable behind them and almost work on punching so they get their scapula to open and they get that airspeed in the front. Because of course everybody’s going to work underneath, but to actually get that speed and alacrity and velocity through the air before you reset. So sometimes teaching people on land is a good way to do it, just so… Or when they’re holding something that prevents them from totally thinking with their hands.

Eney: So right now when you’re sitting with me, lift your elbows and pressure index finger up and down. You can feel that in the front of your shoulder. Do you feel that in the front? Now with the third finger, press it up and down and it moves mid shoulder. So then go to the fourth and fifth fingers and it takes it to your triceps and lats. And what’s interesting is, is you’ll see a lot of people that are thinkers and they’ve entered thumbs down, index fingers, traps, and they found the difference between a good pianist and a great pianist is these fourth and fifth fingers, but also neurologically the first and second fingers are the front of your brain and we’re texting and we’re on the computer, but we really need to activate the fourth and fifth.

Eney: So some coaches do the okay drill, but they didn’t know why they were doing it. Like if you hold a golf ball and have these fingers just to create the awareness in them and to lift the chest. So you’ll get a lot of people, even when you do this, do this with your hands where your thumbs are down in your index fingers. You can feel that in your traps and then press your chest and flatten your hands and lift your elbows. All of a sudden you can get more in your lat. So when I’m trying to teach lat involvement in the catch, sometimes I’ll have people hold their lat because anything tactile is good, so they swim one arm holding their lat. And then to work on body position, I’ll have them put their arm behind their back so that… I call this Roger Bannister Breaking the Tape. It really makes you open up through the diaphragm and swim one arm with your hand behind your back as high as you can get the other hand. And they think they can’t do it, but what it does is it changes their water awareness.

Brenton: Yeah, and that’s where I… It’s a good place to start with so many people, especially for triathletes, because one thing that I really teach now if they’re open water swimming or doing triathlon is you probably want to be looking somewhere forwards. Obviously not straight forwards, but down at that 45 degree angle. Still keep the neck neutral and long, but have that proud posture, set the eyes slightly forwards, you’re going to be so much better off. And one of the things you mentioned in a recent post was you’ve got so much better awareness around what’s happening in your race, in the open water, when you are looking slightly forwards

Eney: And it makes sighting easier. It actually makes swimming easier because when you’re stretched through the chest, it lifts the shoulders and you can almost peek one eye out without even stopping. And then your head is not pushing water either because your head’s pretty high, not lifted from the neck but from the chest. So what’s been interesting to me is to monitor people in the flume and just by changing body position, people have been 11 seconds faster per 100 without more effort, keeping the same effort, but by changing their body position. And that to me is where I start because in open water there are a lot of obstacles and in triathlons, pretty much everything you want to see is in front of you unless you’re doing a race where there’s big surf and you’re getting out and you do need to look back. But to have people breathe more forward and open their chest in the diaphragm has made a really big difference.

Eney: And at first it was hard because it’s countered to a lot of stuff that’s out there, whether it’s Red Cross or Navy Seals or, “My coach in Des Moines said this.” But then when it starts working and you present it as an option rather than a given and more of an exploratory thing, because I do think not everybody’s somatotype is the same. As you get older, people get injured and sometimes they have to change how they’re doing things. So you know, you can’t have it be one size fits all.

Brenton: Yeah, yeah, exactly right. And I think that’s one of the things that when I first came across the stuff that you were doing, that’s one of the things that appealed to me. It’s like, “Well, this is what’s commonly taught, but this is actually what you’re seeing at the top level with a certain range of swimmers. So why are we teaching it?” And I’m talking about a crossover kick, and there’s a number of other things like that that I’ve sort of looked into and learned from you that I try and take on board when I’m working with someone because there’s so many different nuances to all these different parts of the stroke and it really depends on what they’re training for. Like with a triathlete, the stroke or what you’re trying to teach them can be very different than someone who’s going to be swimming in the pool only.

Eney: Oh, exactly. And there are people that can change it. Like one of the reasons Katie Ledecky is so fun to watch is she actually changes her kick through a 1500. And even watching Paltrinieri this last year do so well in the pool; and you’ve seen him, his crossover kick is at his ankles, but it’s really… He went a 1:49 at us nationals for the 10K, that to me is amazing. You know, and it’s not classic swimming, but there are people that have been doing this for years and that’s where it’s been fun, to look at the history of the sport, look at the etymology, look at what works. And even having people be safe in open water, I don’t want them looking down and plowing through the water. I just don’t think that that’s how people should swim in open water, there’s too many obstacles. And even in a race you have to be aware of the different factors.

Brenton: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so for people who are listening, you do a lot of coaching in Boulder and that’s where you’re based, and obviously you’ll be coming over to the Camo in May in Australia, but for anyone who wants to get in contact with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Eney: So you can contact me through my website, which is any www.eneyjones.com or through Eney Buoy which has a… You can submit a question. Also, the business name is Catalyst Advisors. So even if you just Googled my name, there’s three different ways. I also respond to Facebook, Instagram, any kind of social media. And I do answer a lot of questions because the phase I’m in right now is I want to give coaches some tools and some different ways of doing things and also athletes, because a lot of people get stuck and think, “Well this is as fast as I can swim and I just have to go to more practices to get my fitness better.” But if they learned different ways to manipulate their body position, change their breathing, heighten their awareness, it could be a little easier and they can spend time doing other stuff. So I’m pretty responsive as far as you know, you don’t have to subscribe, you can just ask and I’ll answer questions about, “Hey, I have an athlete that we’re stuck here. What do you think?”

Eney: And I think that’s the beauty of a lot of the way that you teach and you present things, you don’t present just the one way, there’s a lot of different ways, and I know being a former teacher, educator, people learn in different ways and there’s always a different approach to get the result you want. So sometimes you have to go through a lot of different things to where it can click with an athlete and as a coach, learning how they respond. Do they need to do it? Do they need to read articles? Do you need to go through what every coach that they’ve had a said and say, “Well, okay, but maybe try this. And they said that because of this.” So you know, even learning with your athlete I think is a great way to coach because you can’t just stand on deck and say the same thing over and over again if they’re not getting it.

Brenton: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I was actually… I had a podcast recently with a swimmer who I did some filming with, and she’s a very high level surf lifesaver. And her coach was saying her… She was basically crossing over and her coach had told her again and again and again, and she just didn’t quite get it until she saw herself swimming. And it’s like, that’s all she needed. She’s a visual learner.

Eney: Yeah-

Brenton: And so it doesn’t take a lot.

Eney: I do think that that’s… I think so many people when they see themselves then they go, “Oh I got it now.” Yeah.

Brenton: And so if you haven’t got yourself an Eney Buoy yet, grab one of those as well, because they’re… If you don’t know what they added, a pool boy that you’ve developed and it’s basically two plastic, cylindrical containers with a very narrow connector in the middle and it’s really good for buoyancy and it’s got this narrow gap in the middle so you can really keep their core connected. So I really, I love your pool boy and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s looking to get one. And you’ve had that around for quite a while and I think it’s just one of the best tools that, especially triathletes and open water should get. But for anyone who’s swimming, I just, I love to use my Eney Buoy when I’m at the pool.

Eney: Oh, well great. Well thank you.

Brenton: So anyway, Eney, thanks so much for being on the podcast again, and I’m looking forward to seeing you in May in sunny Queensland.

Eney: Great, thanks. Okay.


CeilidhRobertson
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Amazing swimming and fitness podcast

Love, love, love listening to Brenton and his guests. Always learning something new to add to my swim sets with drills or training sets. Also very motivational guests with great tips to add to your fitness routine. I love the stories of the longer distant swims and what’s involved. I’m always smiling after listening to these podcasts!! Thank you so much !!!!

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Brenton and Mitch were great to work with at the clinic, Good to get video analysis to work on straight away, practice some new drills and go home knowing what you need to work on.

Alex McFadyen

Sydney