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 episode number 117 of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. I’m currently in the car on the way to the airport. We’ve got clinics up in Canswell and Cans, which is North Queensland here in Australia. And one of the things that I’ve been talking to a lot of swimmers about recently is their current beliefs about what they need to do when they’re swimming. A few examples of this are a couple of members that I’ve recently had join. They’ve had these beliefs in their mind about what they should be doing with their stroke to swim fast. Things that they’ve either picked up from other coaches or other swimmers, or they might have learned from watching videos online. And some beliefs can be helpful, but some can make you freeze.

They can make you plateau. And I see this more often than not when I’m working face-to-face with swimmers. And it’s not something that they’ll directly say to me, they’re saying, this is what I have been told and this is what I’m going for. But you can see it if you start to peel back the layers and ask the right questions. And this is something that I would encourage you to question yourself. And that’s what beliefs you currently have about your swimming that might actually be holding you back. An example of this is somebody who recently joined the membership. He was taking some classes from a coach that was local to him. And the coach was telling him, you need to enter your hand and go very deep. You’ve got to go well below the line of your shoulder. You’ve got to really drive it down deep and then hold it there for at least a second in order to find your balance or something along those lines. And so we submitted a video through the membership and we had a look at it.

And it was obvious that he was just going way too deep with his hand in his reach phase of the stroke. So his hand was about 30, 40 centimetres below the line of his shoulder when he’d finished reaching forwards. Now we want this to be just a little bit deeper than your armpit in order to have a very slight downwards angle with your arm. And what we saw there was he was going so deep that his arm was just putting the brakes on. With his arm so deep, the oncoming water is hitting the top of his arm, slowing him down, putting the brakes on. And it’s almost impossible to overcome that drag and that resistance that he was creating because of this one belief. So what we’re now working towards, and it’s only been a week, but what we’re working towards is just getting him to let go of that belief, change it, and aim for the right depth with that part of the stroke. And we’re going to practice that for three or four weeks.

He’s then going to send in another video. We’ll have a look at how his stroke’s progressing and then look at what the next thing is to work on. And maybe breaking down another one of those beliefs that he holds because of what he’s been told in the past. So have a think about what are some of those things that you’ve taken on from coaches or from other swimmers that might actually be holding you back. Another example of this is, I had a swimmer come to our Melbourne clinic recently and her coach was telling her to pull harder. The way to swim faster is to pull harder, pull harder. And you could see that she was going for a lot of power straight away in the stroke. So as soon as her hand entered, she was just going for a break. She was really trying to pull through with everything she had. And this was doing a few things for her. Number one, she was getting tired after 100 meters, no matter what the pace that she was swimming at.

The other thing that she was doing was just slipping in the water. And by slipping, I mean in the catch phase, the reach phase, she was just pulling through too early. So she just wasn’t able to get into a good catch position. The elbow was dropping and she was slipping. So she just wasn’t maintaining much pressure or force on the water. And it wasn’t until we kind of got down to the bottom of it where I kind of asked her. I said to her, it looks like you’re trying to pull through too hard too early. You should accelerate through the stroke. So you’re going to be about a little bit slower out in front while you set yourself up with the catch. It’s all about setting yourself up in the early phase of the stroke, getting into a good position. And then you can start to apply power and you can start to increase the speed at which your hand moves through. And then you’ll exit with a bit of speed there. And it wasn’t until we sort of went over that,

and she said, oh, my coach said, this is what I need to do. So this is what I’ve been trying to do. And yeah, and so we sort of uncovered one of those beliefs that was holding her back. So what are some of those things that you currently hold that might be holding you back? Now, there are some beliefs that will also help you. So if you do underwater filming, if you have your stroke analyzed, or if you’re working with a coach that you trust, then you might need to hold some beliefs that will help you make those positive changes in your stroke. But it’s something that I come across a lot. And sometimes it will take me three or four sessions with someone to actually uncover what those beliefs are. If you can think about what they are, write them down. And just question, are they ones that are actually helping you work towards your swimming goals? So this has been episode number 117. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

If you’re not currently a subscriber to our YouTube channel, I’m posting videos there regularly every week. We do our feedback Friday videos on YouTube. And this is where I analyze someone’s stroke. Just give you a couple of things to consider, to think about with your own swimming and help you better understand what we like to look for, the things that we like to coach and teach in freestyle. And hopefully they help you as well. So if you’re a visual learner and you’re on YouTube, go to the effortless swimming YouTube page, regularly adding videos there. One of the best ways to get access to that is through our app. So we’ve got a free app. If you just search effortless swimming in the App Store, either through the Android App Store or the iTunes App Store. And there you can access all of these podcasts. You can access all of our YouTube videos just directly from your phone through our app, which is free.

So that’s how I think we’ve got about 4, 5,000 people who have the app and watch the podcast and watch the videos through there. So if you don’t currently have the app, then go to the App Store, whichever provider you’re with. So thanks for listening. I’ll see you next time on the Effortless Swimming Podcast. 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.