I don’t know about you, but like for me, like I always find that very, very common. The thing is, is that it usually starts with breathing in swimming. Because people who are uncomfortable in the water or a swimming environment, they’re just, they’re trying to find a way to get oxygen. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Tim Ballantine, who I’ve known for quite a few years now. And Tim, you’re up on the Sunshine Coast up, well, up towards Noosa, where we run a camp every year. And you moved up there pretty recently from Melbourne. So, how are you enjoying it up there? And welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Brenton, mate. Yeah, it’s a, it’s been a great move. We’ve been up here on the sunny coast for a couple of years, albeit we were on the Gold Coast for about eight years, mate. So we got a bit of a taste in as probably how I sort of fell into endurance sports to be frank. And then we found out we’re having our first born and decided we’d move back to Melbourne to be close to the sort of friends and family and lasted 18 months. Because our lifestyle had just changed so much to be frank, even just the getting up early bit, you know, we just, we moved to the Gold Coast when we’re

about 2021, which is not a bad age to move to the Gold Coast, mind you. But then, yeah, just totally, you know, in seven or eight years, which life happens, we just changed our behaviors, our lifestyle and tried to sort of pick all that up and move it to Melbourne. I still love, I still consider Melbourne where I’m from, obviously, but just with with work, life, business and all the, all the hats that, that you wear. It made sense to come back to Queensland and, and such is the business that I run, you can sort of run it from, from anywhere. And we picked, we used to come to Coolham Beach for a holiday. And so we just picked that we’d live here. It’s kind of like without rubbing it in. But yeah, very, very lucky, very, very lucky. We love it. It’s a, you have a couple of camps up here. So all your listeners and effortless, we would know it’s noose or an around here, mate. It’s pretty hard to beat, for instance, pretty hard to beat, mate.

Look, I do whatever I can to get up there. And so that’s why I think it’s important to escape the cold when you, when you get the chance. So it’s a great place to, to train. And, and you obviously come from a high level of sport background, but also coaching a number of athletes who have gone on to competing Kona. And you’ve got quite a widespread of athletes that you’re coaching. And on this podcast, I want to talk about and kind of get out of you. What are some of those things that you’ve learned over the last seven, eight years as an athlete and as a coach that, that you could pass on to those people that are listening? Because we have a whole bunch of triathletes and endurance athletes that, that listen to this. And I think it’d be great to kind of pick your brain and see what some of those things are. So from a, I guess, a coaching perspective, what, where did you start with that? And where have you sort of got to, how has your philosophy changed over

the last couple of years? Good, good question. I think like most coaches, they, they start out with just a toe in the water. It’s, it’s a, I find coaching, and you know, some coaches have been doing for 20, 30 years, Mike cringe, but it’s, I still find it quite an immature industry or an immature career. I still think that it’s, it’s sort of finding its way, maybe in a different context of the way that we operate as well, but it’s very hard to just dive headfirst into and leave whatever it is that you’re doing behind. You need obviously to be underpinned by, by good qualifications and good mentorship. And I think as a coach starting out, that’s really, really critical that, that you get good people around you. I think that’s like anything in life, isn’t it? Like you, and part of one of those people, I’ll be honest, without your head wobbling off, I saw you as, as a real sort of leading thinker in the context of swimming, which is why I sort of cold called you and asked to sort of tag

along in a few bits and pieces and pick your brain. And I also was partnered up there with Craig Percival and did a lot of stuff with him in Melbourne. And, you know, sadly, we lost Craig tragically. And that really changed the whole landscape for me in a really heavy, heavy-hearted kind of way. It sort of maybe forced my hand to make some, some harder decisions. And, but he was, he was a great man. And that’s the picture. If you have got the video going, I don’t know, live, but he’s the one right there behind me. And yeah, so great people, man. It’s like your athletes too, Brenton, you’d be the same. You just learned so much from good people. And hopefully as a coach also, you know, you’re trying to impart some of that knowledge. But certainly for me starting out, if you are thinking about having a go at coaching,

surround yourself with good mentors. And there’s some great coaches out there, like really great coaches, but they just might not be for you as well. It’s a bit like you was an athlete as well. Like there would be some great coaches out there who, if I put my athlete head on for a second, just wouldn’t be right for me. And the same goes for mentors in business and in coaching. You’ve got to find what sort of works for you as well. Yeah, exactly. I think, you know, if I had to be a hard-ass old school sort of swimming coach, I would, that wouldn’t, that’s not me. I’m just a little bit more laid back, probably a bit more friendlier than some of the hard-ass coaches. And I’m getting better at sort of putting the foot down when I need to, not in a, you know, like a controlling way, but just in a way of, a lot of people respond well to that sort of coaching where they want to be told, all right, you’ve got to go for it now, that sort of thing. And so just learning to change for the athlete

that you’re working with. But the overall, I guess the overall way that I coach is not going to be like that. So I think, yeah, you sort of find your style, you find your groove. And then the people who are attracted to that will come to you and they’ll be the ones that want to work with you. Well, you’re not for everyone, right? I mean, you can’t, you can’t be all things to all people. And that’s also a thing that you try and, you try and work out early days when you’re, when you’re thinking, even if you’re sort of that part-time, full-time, sort of thing, am I going to do this full-time? It’s like, you try to be everything to everyone because you think you have all the answers. And frankly, yeah, I can help you with this, that. And then the further you get down the road, you start to work out your strengths as a coach as well and what your weaknesses are. And, and also the type of athletes that you like working

with, you know, that’s, that’s the bottom line. That’s that to be perfectly frank. There’s certain types of athletes that as a coach you like working with, and there’s some that you don’t. And that’s okay. You know, that’s, that’s, I don’t see any problem with that. You’d rather be honest up front. So I remember when I first did my swimming Australia accreditation that your old man, I think Brian, is he Brian? Yeah, he spoke and he would, he would be genuinely one of the more impressive people I’ve heard speak about swim coaching. His passion, his passion was just like, you could, you could really, you could feel it in the room. And like you could just, I remember seeing you, this was at least five or six years ago, you were sitting in the front row. I remember looking down at you and because I was in the back of the auditorium going, wow, what a, like for you knowing that you’re a swim coach, like

what a great mentor. You know, I hope I haven’t thrown you under the bus there, but I, I think that, you know, I certainly just in that one hour in the room with your old man, but you know, what a marvelous mentor and I’m not sure whether he’s still swim coaching. Is he? He is. Yeah. Yeah. He’s, I was going to say he’s doing less, a little bit less, but no, he’s still, still coaching. I don’t know how many sessions a week, eight to 10 sessions a week. And yeah, mum and dad run a learn to swim business, which is quite, quite large. And yeah, I was very lucky to, I was coached by him and obviously saw him coaching others. And I think that’s where I got a lot of my coaching personality from that and the way that I coach and one of the best things that he did, I think when I was probably set, maybe 18 at the time, he sent me over. He said, you should go and see this guy in New Zealand. He’s a, he’s a trainer and he sort of trains people how to train or how to like present and how to

coach. And, and this guy was awesome. So I went to this two day course and he was basically how to, how to get people involved and, and part of the learning process instead of just talking at them. And so just with different exercises and different ways to approach it. And I learnt so much from that course and dad had been to that twice, I think. And, and that made a huge difference. And so when we run our camps in Thailand and that kind of thing, it’s, it’s a way to really just get, get people involved and, and working in small groups. And it made a huge difference to my approach of how people learn because they learn, as you know, you learn so much more from actually doing, being involved, talking with others, sharing your experience than sitting down and watching a, like a presentation, you know, and, and as you said, you could feel the passion that he was talking with. And it’s like, yeah, it’s not the words, it’s, it’s how you say them and, and how you convey it. So I think that’s

really important. There’s that mentor, man. Like, you know, you, you know, that’s what I was sort of touching on. You get those right people. And yeah, it sort of sets you, sets you on the path. And then there does come a point where, you know, you sort of have to, you pull the ripcord and decide, do I want to, do I want to make a fist of this? Like, do I want to make a career out of this? And you don’t really come across many coaches that don’t like their jobs. And not to generalize, but in the, in the general sense, maybe if it’s lawyers, accountants, bankers, like, you’re going to come across the odd person, that it’s just a job or they just, they genuinely don’t like what they do. But let’s try to think coaching is that sort of job where they, if you don’t like it, you’re not going to last very long. And that, and that is of great benefit to athletes and, and clients or whatever, because you’re genuinely, you’re connected to someone that

likes what they do. And it’s because it’d be one of those jobs, I’d find it very, if you didn’t like it, then I don’t think it lasts long at all. I really don’t. So, yeah, that’s certainly, I think something pretty unique to the coaching landscape that, that the majority of people actually like their job as horrible as that might sound. Yeah, well, it’s very true, I think. And thinking of the, the way that you like to sort of program with athletes and work with them, what’s your, how do you go about it? How often are you talking with people? How, how do you set the programs looking at their, at their events coming up? What’s the sort of process that you’d go through? Yeah, sure. So every, I mean, it’s very cliche, but everyone is truly different. And the reality is, is some athletes require a little more communication than others, for sure. I mean, you sort of find that mark, there’s some blokes that, that are kind of like,

mate, just tell me what to do and we’ll, you know, chat once a month and that’s all good. And there’s some athletes that, that sort of, you know, two or three times a week, you sort of hear from or talk to, and that’s fine. And I think that there’s also a point as a coach, you got to be really careful, particularly as an online coach, is that if you find that you’re having to talk to an athlete every day, I actually put that back on me to say, I’m not doing my job to get the message across, because genuinely, if you’re needing to speak and get clarification or feedback every single day, not only is that a bit heavy, but I just think that you’re probably just not doing your job as a coach to try and get the message through as as to what sort of each week means. We use training peaks as our program delivery tool. But really, the program is, is really just the surface as a coach. It’s that I think one of the most underrated things is accountability. And some

athletes who are just dialed in don’t really require accountability. They want the science side. And you just after probably a month or two, you’re kind of fine. What works, Brenton, for, for certain athletes, you know, you got the, you got an athlete who has been on the couch and wanting to do their first half marathon in 12 months. The approach with that athlete is very different to someone who might be wanting to qualify for Kona after their fifth Ironman. I mean, there’s no, there’s no cookie cutter here. We don’t use any, one of the things we do here, not to plug the business, but certainly my other two coaches, well, I’m not much the same. We don’t do any libraries or any, any workout templates or anything like that. So there’s no kind of drag and drop. It’s all literally sounds inefficient, but you get better at it. We write every session for, for what it, for what it is. And that seems to work pretty well. We get

really good results. We don’t sort of, you know, beat our chest about them. But, but certainly if you look sort of pound for pound out, our team does pretty well. And we’re across the world. We’re over 30 countries now. So it’s a great, great diversity in the squad.

And that’s for two reasons. One, it reduces the seasonality of, of, of endurance coaching for sure. So we’re literally 54, 46, Northern Southern Hemisphere as, as of the end of last year. And it just really smooths the income because the reality is, Brenton, we’re trying to make a living too. And I think that any athlete would want their coach not having to worry about whether they can pay the mortgage, it’s more about focusing on trying to get the best out of their athletes. So we’ve made a real effort to try and spread that athlete base. And as a coach, it’s amazing working with people in, in so many different cultures, you know, whether it’s in Japan, you can’t swim the toys, whether it’s in the Middle East, you can’t basically swim in a pool for about four months a year, because it’s like a bath, you know, whether it’s in Europe where, you know, they have ice issues, whether it’s in Australia, like, you know, there’s all kind of different coaching methods as well.

So yeah, it’s good fun. It’s good fun. It’s funny you bring that up. I’ve got, I’ve got three ladies who I do stroke analysis coaching with online and they’re in Japan. And they, and they’ve recently moved pools so they can start to use a snorkel and fins because their pools don’t allow it. It’s like, it’s just such a different thing. And I remember a friend of mine, she’s Japanese, she went back home a couple of years ago. She was swimming in the fast lane in a pool and there was a guy walking in that lane. And he basically, he physically grabbed her and stopped her and told her to stop swimming so fast. It’s like, wow, if you tried that in a pool here in Melbourne, like good luck to you. That’s just the pedals that you’d start doing butterfly with paddles. Yeah, yeah, just the complete opposite. So yeah, you learn a lot from seeing what it’s like in other countries. And I think we’re very lucky here in Australia

with the training environment that we’ve got, particularly the pools. Like there’s so many pools around that you’re hard pressed not to find one within 10 days. It’s part of, swimming’s part of our culture as Australians. And this is one of the things like they talk about sort of the barriers to entry of triathlon. And obviously financials are a big thing. But I would say I’ve said this many times on other podcasts or whatever that swimming’s almost an equal barrier of entry to triathlon as financially, I think pretty close. It’s the one thing that probably creates the most anxiety or scares the most people off that you’ve got to get through the swim. That means it’s I’ve got or worked with where they just want to get through the swim and then they can bike run. Because the reality is, without scaring too many people, if you stop pedaling on the bike, well, you just slow down. And if you stop running or you just stop, but if you stop swimming, you sink.

So like it’s kind of like that’s the reality. So it’s a big thing, you know, like getting past that barrier to entry of swimming. And that’s something that I think triathlon can do a much. I don’t have all the answers, but I think triathlon needs to always constantly work out trying to break down those barriers. And I think swimming’s definitely a big part of that. Yeah, I completely agree. And we have a lot of swimmers who come to our clinics who they’re either wanting to start triathlon and they don’t know how to swim or they can barely swim. Or they’ve done a triathlon, realized they just made it through and they might have had to hold on to the kayak of the lifesavers there for a while. But then and we’ve had so many swimmers who have then after, all right, they know what they need to do. And they’ve got the understanding of the fundamentals that will help them survive and then eventually enjoy it. And after

a couple of months, and sometimes it can take six to 12 months, when they start to enjoy it, it makes such a big difference in their their training and their swing and how they approach the swim when they’re racing. Because as you said, most people just want to get through it. But if you can enjoy the swim, it’s then and I mean, I want to I’d love to swim all day and not have to do the bike and run if that was triathlon. But it’s not the case. But boy, it can make a huge difference. And I think it just takes that level of confidence. And that only comes from experience and having a little bit of education, I think around it. And then just, you know, just just putting in the work as well, because most people don’t want to go to the pool and train. Yeah, it’s a funny one. Like you go to that culture thing, like I’ve got a I’ve got a four year old daughter who’s in the surf at the moment doing, you know, bodyboarding and just crunching through waves. And you think about

some people in most parts of the world who might be jumping in a pool for the first time in their 30s. It’s it’s a totally different and that’s that’s always sometimes a challenge. Even for me as a coach is is obviously swimming always came quite naturally to me because I was lucky. I was, you know, part of a squad and swam, you know, just because in Australia, you know, you just kind of swim and and sometimes you’ve got to be really careful as a coach to not make it sound like it should be all too easy because the reality is, it’s such a technical sport. But also then there’s those layers of how how you’d really want to try and simplify and spit like a golf swing. I use that analogy a little bit, you know, like you change one thing, it’s going to have a trickle down effect. And certainly when, you know, obviously we do some camps, but there is a challenge there of distance where I think certainly myself as a coach in the early days, I tried

to be the pool deck coach by correspondence. And it just really wasn’t working. I was pretty well overloading my athletes with with corrections. And the more and more I pulled back. So if someone sends me a swim video, probably just like you, you know, I could give them 10 red lines and 10 things to work on. But I kind of archive that and just give them literally one thing at a time. That’s what I found sort of works with one or two things. And then naturally as they correct those one or two things, it may inherently maybe create one other problem, or it may fix five or six others as well. So I found that as a coach, a really, really important step myself. So, you know, most of my athletes are certainly not able to with GoPros now and underwater cameras, they’re sending me videos all the time. So, but then it’s the doing, doing of it, you know, it’s all very well to have a have a glossy picture, but then you’ve got to go do it.

Yeah, that’s, and that’s what I’ve really come down to as well. Like when I first started doing the online coaching, I first wanted, is this will actually, will this actually work? And can I help someone improve their swimming if they’re in the US or somewhere else? And can I do that by, by being remote? And the thing, the thing I found about it, and I spoke to a guy, Baden, who, who runs the skillist app, which is what we use for analysis. And he does that with golf. And we kind of came to this golf swimming, right? Exactly. Like it’s so similar. And we sort of came to the same conclusion that like what we both found was, you can actually improve sometimes even more than face to face coaching, because if you keep it really simple, it’s like, all right, this one or two things, this is what you need to do. This is what this is the drill that might help. And this is what you might expect to experience or feel. And you might need to exaggerate the thing you’re

trying to change. But sometimes that can actually be better for them because they’ve got the time and the space to be able to just make that change. And I think that’s probably similar as well with coaching by correspondences, people can kind of think about the session, they’re not feeling pressured with maybe other people around or the coach. So it can actually work better in many instances, which is surprising. Yeah, as you would know, like I think as a triathlon coach and an endurance coach, you do have to wear a few hats as to Brenton. So like we have to understand not to downplay, obviously just focusing on one sport, but you have to kind of know a fair bit about the three disciplines. So what I also did is, you know, I’ve got quite a few athletes that consult with you, mate, you know, that I kind of there is, there is a I have a lower expert ceiling than you do, because you think and breathe it every single day swimming. So if I kind of get to a point where

I’m struggling to get through or potentially need a different voice, you obviously help quite a few of my athletes as well. So again, if you are a coach, don’t be afraid to say that you don’t actually have all the answers. It’s a it’s a hard thing to say because you think that the athlete may think less of you, but I would only stress that nine times out of 10, and I would I would actually hope 10 the athletes should appreciate that. And then, you know, in the end, it’s for their benefit. So, you know, certainly, there has to be a lot of a lot of trust there. But yeah, man, lots, lots of lessons, you’ve sort of got to learn the hard way and fall on your face from time to time. But that’s that’s life, right? Yeah, I say it all the time. I cringe looking at the stuff that I used to teach and coach 10 years ago when I was when I first started. But that’s that’s a good thing. It means that you’ve actually changed what you’ve

done and you’ve learned something. So it’s probably good not to look back at that too much, even some of the videos I used to do, even just on on YouTube from that long ago, it’s just what I can’t look back at them. It’s painful. I don’t look, I don’t know about you. But like for me, like, I always find it very, very common. The thing is, is that it usually starts with breathing in swimming. Is that’s where the kind of because people who are uncomfortable in the water or a swimming environment, they’re just they’re trying to find a way to get oxygen. Because when they’ve got their face down, there’s there’s no O2 down there that they can appropriately filter. So it’s like, they’re just always just trying to find O2 in whatever way that seems to work. And it’s kind of almost a survival mode. And so that for me, as a coach, is like my first go to is, okay, how are these people trying to get air? It’s trying to simplify

it, right? So that’s kind of that’s where I’ll start with, particularly with with regions that aren’t, you know, have a strong cultural swimming background, be it Asia or India or the Middle East, that that’s that, you know, they’re just not as adverse to swimming all the time. And typically, I see that it’s the breathing that that lies at the heart, you know, obviously the legs sinking those sorts of things. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to breathe before you can kick your legs. So get that right first, like get the breathing bit right first, and then that often will settle them into an environment that they are probably never fully comfortable in mate, like probably never it’s not a natural, but certainly enough to get through a 1.9 or a 3.8k open water swim. It’s tough, though. It’s hard. Like, I don’t get it because I’m a swimmer, but I get it. I get the scary bit. I get it. Like, nobody wants to die.

And I was sort of I was thinking about this the other day, like if I if I wasn’t a swimmer, and I was out in the surf, if I was surfing in a reasonable size, well, how comfortable would I actually be out there if I was a not a not a handy swimmer, if I was a fairly weak swimmer? And I was thinking that’d be really scary. If I felt like I was I might struggle to make 200 meters swimming, if you lost your surfboard, and you’re out there. And I thought, okay, I can kind of I can relate to that a bit because I imagine what it would be like if you brand you to the sport, you’re in a big pool, it might be deep. That that’s very, that’s going to create some anxiety. 100%. 100%. So I think that that’s, you know, if there’s anything that I can kind of, you know, is certainly that breathing aspect. And, you know, and there’s all sorts of fixes for all different issues. And then with the drills, but that’s, you know, always sort of comes through

for me as the sort of the primary thing when people are starting is, is getting that breathing right. And all the things associated with it. And with the some athletes that you’ve coached, let’s say ones that you’ve coached for a longer period of time, and the ones that have improved their swimming, what are some of those factors that you see making a difference in maybe some examples of athletes don’t need to give names or anything. But what’s what are some of those things that you see making a difference? Well, for the guys that I’ve coached for a long period of time, typically, I’d like to think they’ve improved. So they are they get to a level where they’re not so relatively competitive, but they’re comfortable in the environment in which that they race or belong in. So let’s say triathlon. I was one of a bit of a breakthrough thing. So just sort of park technique, but just sit in the helicopter of just swimming in general is

that, you know, swimming, swimming is often approached in the wrong way. I think for triathletes says that sometimes it can just be seen as a recovery session to the bike and the run. And they just don’t bring the intensity required to make improvements. So you think about bike or run, there’s got to be some intensity there to get faster or to get stronger. You’ve got to put in efforts, but people aren’t often willing to do the hard 100s and 200s in the pool. And this is past the point of, can I swim or not? This is just genuinely hard work. And so what a lot of athletes make the mistake or what they tend to do is they just increase volume. So like, you know, I’ve got a doing bus. Oh, I’ve got a long swim coming up. I’ll just chuck the paddles on for two Ks. You know, that’ll make me stronger. I’d much rather you go and do 10 100s to be frank and half the distance, but increase the intensity, because the reality is Brenton also, when they’re trying to balance swim by ground,

they can’t swim 20 Ks a week typically. Right. So we’re doing maybe three, maybe four swims for some of the guys going to Kona certainly, but three swims a week, three to four Ks. You and I both know that those high, high level swimmers are swimming 50, 60 Ks, right? So we’re trying to get kind of marginally improvement out of in reality in the pool in terms of time commitment, not all that much. If you have got a pie, a pie chart or a wedge swimming gets the smallest portion, right? So I think you’ve got to try and inject some intensity in there. And that’s really hard to do initially because typically that the notion is, Oh, I’ll just chuck the pool boy in or, you know, just kind of go through the motions. And when they get to understand, or they get on the clock, get on the clock, like start to use the clock at the pool, this thing that has a time thing on it rotates around 60, not just the garment, you know, you just stop, start your going like get on the

clock. That’s also a big thing that I find gets people to break through because you don’t win. It’s such a cliche. You’re not winning a triathlon with a swim. But goddamn, like you can set up such a great race, which having with having a good swim, or if you have a bad swim and you’re trying to do something in terms of qualifying or just, you know, move up the order in your age group, you’re just chasing tail all day. And yeah, it’s it’s a tricky one. So I think intensity is a big thing. I think that that is something that often is just kind of left on the on the side. Yeah. And I think along with that, and it kind of plays into it, it’s just that that change of pace and most and I get it too. I mean, I’m looking at the running that I’ve done over the last two months and I’ve started to run a bit more. Well, yeah, I’ve sort of tapered off now. I had a great decision. It’s on Strava had a 70k week,

but now I’m back to about 10 different things. But it’s kind of waned off now, and I’m probably doing like 15ks a week. So that’s back into it. But the like the pace has just been pretty consistent. Like I haven’t I haven’t done any hardly any efforts. It kind of likes I’m going to the pool and just swimming. But when I look back at the training I was doing for Ironman, I had a lot of varied pace and, you know, it might be one k on one k off. But and my speed was so much better when I’m looking at the times that I was doing in in races. And so I can see how it’s easy to just slip into sitting at one speed. But if you can just throw in some some efforts or variable pace work, that you you just get so much better at actually racing. 100% because races have a great very high level of variable pace, don’t they? You know, from the start to the to the finish of whatever distance the start is usually like well and truly over threshold, you know, and even trying to swim to get around people or

swim to have people go past you or people swimming over the top of you. There’s just it’s not like following a black line in the open water. So, you know, you’ve got to get used to that variance in heart rate or whatever mechanism that you’re using. But also, you know, if you are on limited time, I genuinely think that you’ve just got to bring bring the heat as they say in the pool and knowing what that sort of feels like, like, you know, for even myself who, you know, I’ve got, you know, not a bad swimmer in the context of triathlon, like when I’m, you know, at the end of the hard 200 or 10 by 200, like I’m over the lane ropes, like I’m in, I’m in not in pain, but I’m certainly looking for oxygen. And I very rarely see that at the pool. If I think about people sort of touching the wall and coming up to have a drink, they don’t I always kind of looking like I did not work and hard enough. And you know, I just stay to stay in my own little bubble. But some people might look at me

and go, Jesus, it pokes nuts. But that’s kind of what’s required, I think, not all the time. Obviously, you don’t have to do it every swim set. The coach will guide you. But if it says hard, or if it says sprint, that’s, that’s what it’s there to be, there to be done. But you’ve got to be underpinned by, by pretty good technique to be able to do it too. I think it becomes quite, it’s quite a fun and quite an addictive thing to, to do. Like I, when I’m leading up to summer, like when I’m with Peter Pub, which is a 1200 meter race, and hopefully some other events around that. But there’s usually, I’ll do some sets that might be some 400s or 200s looking to hit that same sort of pace that I want to do in the race. And it’s like, I look forward to that session every, every time I do it, might be one or two sessions a week. But it’s like, yeah, I want to, I want to get in there and have a go and see if I can go a little bit quicker this week and, and see that progression

over the course of eight to 12 weeks. And, and look, when you’re not fit and you’re not feeling good, it’s a grind. So you normally have to sit, I mean, I normally have to sit a couple of seconds slower than where I would ideally like to be. But when that’s the case, just suck it up and go, okay, today’s not my day, but I’ve still got to put in the, the effort. But I know the times won’t be there. I always find, even if you’ve got a big pedigree in swimming, it even shows like you take two weeks off swimming. Oh, yeah, out of the pool for an extended period. I really think that percentage wise, it feels the sting. It comes back relatively quick. But you know, if you take a couple of weeks off the bike or maybe even running, you can kind of claw it back. I found with swimming though, like it is, like it’s the audit kind of where you’re at. I was fine with swimming, like it’ll tell you, tell you where

you’re at. So yeah, it’s a funny one. But yeah, may absolutely love it. Like, you know, you’ve got to, got to enjoy getting in the water. And it’s a, yeah, it’s a good environment to be. I just love that there’s always something to, to work on. So in, in November, I had, I did a 12, 200 set and just that’s, it was the quickest I’ve ever done in training. And, and then the next, I think it was like the next day, I came off the mountain bike and I couldn’t move my arm above there for four weeks. So I just, I nearly, I just stuffed up my AC joint. And so I’m about 98% of the way. Do you know the issue? Do you know the issue? You’re on a mountain bike. Yeah, I know. I was, yeah. And it’s gotten two rides since and they’ve been pretty tame. So, um, yeah, I must have heard of this one. It doesn’t count.

No, it’s down to the cafe and you get your soy latte. Yeah, that’s right. I saw, I think, oh, well, all I’m going to do now is not go downhill at all. I was well beyond my, my ability, but it’s taking me, what is it now? It’s nearly four November, December. Okay. So it’s three and a half months and I’m, I’m about back to where I was then. And obviously that’s the sort of injury, but I was out for a few weeks and it just takes a while to get back. But the good thing about it is I’ve been able to work on my stroke while I couldn’t swim fast and while I couldn’t swim hard. And, um, and I feel like this sort of change in strokes that I’ve been able to work on will actually help me to go quicker again in probably the next four to four to six weeks time. So it’s, you know, there’s always something to improve even, even at a high level. And it’s, it’s a great thing that I love about the sport. I think, um, I’ll do, if I was listening, if I was listening to this right now,

I’d have one thing. What’s he swim for 12 by 200? Can you say at times?

Yeah. It’s short course. So it doesn’t, it doesn’t count. Long course would be different, but, uh, what’s your 200 time? It was, it was 10 to 12. How many was it? 12. Was it 12? No, sorry. I lie. It was 10, 10 twos on, um, on 230 coming in on 220. Oh yeah. That’s solid. Short course though. So long course probably add five seconds in overall. I think, but, um, yeah, that, that, but it killed me, but, uh, see that’s, um, that’s really interesting. Not to, like, not to turning into a, a, a, a weighing contest, but so when I’m coming right into my peak swimming into say an Ironman, I’ll do 10 twos, um, and I’ll try and touch under 230 and leave on the 245. That’s about for me. So if I get to that, it’s funny, just a yardstick. If I can, once I can do that for say a month, I know that I’m ready to swim an Ironman in around kind of under 55. And that’s typically, I was trying really hard for a long period of time as an athlete to try and

get my Ironman swim under 50 minutes. And I, at the end of the day, I was putting way too many eggs in that basket and just, I should be just happy with the 53, 54, but trying to put more time towards my bike. And that changed the game for me, Branson, in terms of just in a half context. That was a real game changer. So I think even when I was asking you a few things, I was trying to get my time under 50. And I kind of just, I gave up on that. It was just taking way too much time. I probably would have got there, but my bike was just suffering too much. And so I just am now content being a 54 and riding a lot better. So, and that’s, um, yeah, that’s definitely changed racing, racing for me for sure. But yeah, no, it’s interesting 10, 1032, I mean, 230, 220, holy moly, but yeah, that’s flying. Well, I say that. And then I speak to someone like Dan Smith, who, yeah. And I, oh man, some of the sets that he was doing, like he’s doing 400, no, 300s,

coming in on like, oh, what was it? He was descending. It was like 256, 254, 250 or something. This is short course again, but it’s like, oh my God. All right. That’s a whole nother level. Yeah, it is. But then triathletes will say, well, then you got to go run a 250 marathon, though. Try to do that, you know? So that’s like, that’s the battle though. Like where do you shift? So if you’ve got eight hours to train a week, where do you put? So as a coach or as an athlete, where do you allocate the time? And so if you’ve got eight hours, 10, 12, 15, whatever it may be, you kind of, and then you got strength as well. You really just project managing people’s time. A lot of the time and like a swim, you know, like a 60 minute swim set is actually a couple of hours by the time you get to the pool, get out of the pool, do all those things. It’s two hours. Whereas like, say an indoor trainer on the bike, two hours,

a one hour trainer sets about a 115 time commitment. So that’s genuinely like, you know, you’re trying to crunch people’s schedules so much these days as well. So that’s also, I think, where swimming suffers is that unless you’ve got a 50 meter lap pool in your house, which we don’t all do like you do in your mansion, but you know, it’s tricky to do. Yeah. I mean, I look back at when I was doing triathlon and next time I do a half Ironman or full distance Ironman, so much more time needs to go on to the bike. I was doing 250, 300 ks a week. It needs to be a lot more than that to actually do well because I look at that bike was just a huge chunk of my race and I put too much time into the swim. That was it.

Rewind two minutes, mate. That’s exactly like what I kind of discovered and yeah, real breakthrough. So if you’re looking for a coach, hit me up. Yeah, that’s right. And so in terms of getting in touch with you and you run a podcast as well, which we haven’t talked about. So do you want to maybe talk about where people can find you and your podcast and get in touch with you? Yeah. So our coaching business is called CoaSports. So we’re an online coaching business with, like I said, athletes around the world. So they can just go to CoaSports.com.au. We do do a podcast, which you’ll be coming on in May when I drag you up here as well. There’s a fancy there in person. So this is that. We’ve got a bit of a studio, but we do a lot of esports stuff as well in the Zwift world. So we do a lot of stuff, but I’ve got two other full-time coaches, Kent Cross and Greg McDermott. So we’re all full-time. That’s a really big thing for me that there’s plenty of coaching

businesses with a lot more coaches and a lot more athletes. But I really believe, as I kind of project myself as an athlete, sometimes I’d want my coach to be full-time, to be frank. I want them to be thinking not so much about me, but about the career or the discipline or the industry of coaching and all the different ways and the changes and the innovation and the different tools. And that’s really hard. I think if you’re an accountant Monday to Friday and you’re writing programs on a Friday night after a big week, that’s really difficult to do. And so that’s creating, you’ve got three full-time coaches here. That’s pretty unique because, like I said, coaching is still quite an immature thing. So very, very lucky. But yeah, hit us up on the website. My own Twitter got a blog and all sorts of stuff. So maybe you chuck it in the notes. But they’re always looking for new talent. And I think we’ve got about half a dozen or eight

going to Kona next year already. So it should be pretty, pretty son-tappo, 70.3 local, 70.3 world champs, which is going to be massive. And we’re up in Asia all the time, racing and doing some stuff up there as well. So yeah, love it, mate. Just full all in. Just absolutely love it. Very busy. That’s great. And it sounds like it’s really grown, especially with athletes in 30 countries as well. So it’s huge. And I’ll put all those links in the show notes. And you’ll be able, yeah, people listening will be able to find everything there. So mate, thanks for coming on the podcast and looking forward to being on yours in a couple of months time. No worries, mate. We’ll see you then. 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.