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 a very special episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. This one is titled The Best of 2017. So we’ve compiled all of the best parts from all of the podcasts across the year and we’ve put them into this one episode. And what I really enjoy is when someone replies to an email that I’ve sent out or they just let me know through our Facebook page, just of episodes that they’ve enjoyed, some things that they’ve learned, taken away and changed as part of their swimming or their diet or their life, and they’ve been able to make a change to their life just based on listening to this podcast and some of the guests that we have on. So if you do enjoy the podcast or there’s some things you’d like to see more of or less of,

let me know, I’d really enjoy hearing back from people. So don’t be afraid to hit reply to any of the emails if you’re on our newsletter. And if you haven’t got our app yet that’s in the Google Play Store or on the iTunes Store, search Effortless Swimming. Our app will come up and you can download our free app which will give you direct access to all of our podcasts so you can get notified directly on your phone when there’s a new episode up. It’s also got all of our YouTube videos, all of our clinics and camps on there. And if you’re an Effortless Swimming member you can log in directly through the app just to make it really easy to use the membership. So thank you for everyone listening this year. I appreciate all the feedback and the comments and I’m really looking forward to next year. So we’ve got the HowWeek camp coming up again in Thailand. I’m looking to add another camp location which I will hopefully announce soon once it’s all organized.

And our Freestyle Clinics we’re looking to make some upgrades to it as well to change it and improve it because I never want to get stuck just doing the same thing. I always look for ways to do things better. So what I’m looking to do for next year is just change things up slightly. The Freestyle Clinics based on some things I’ve been testing recently and I’m looking forward to putting those into practice. So thank you very much for a big year. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you think of this podcast and let me know what else you’d like to do more of. Thanks again for listening. I’ll see you in 2018. One of the things that sticks in my mind is you run a spin class up near your place, sort of north of Melbourne there. And you said a couple of the people who had done the spin class were coming up to you afterwards and I think they were wondering about weight loss and they’re doing all this training but the weight’s not coming off.

And you said, let me guess what you are eating for breakfast and lunch. And you guessed it, pretty much spot on. And they were like, how did you know that? And you sort of mentioned all of that stuff. Let’s give that for an example, like talking about one of the people who has come up after a spin class, wondering about how they can lose the weight as they’re doing all this training. Yeah, do you want to talk about that? There’s two. Firstly there’s this lovely young girl and I’ve written this on a blog so if you guys want to read the full story about both clients they can. This girl, let’s say Gemma is her name, right? First spin class ever that I had these people, I talk about nutrition. And one of the things I just said was, look, if you’re a little bit overweight, really think about what you’re eating, I only eat two to three meals a day. I don’t eat snacks and I train 70 hours a week. And then one of them said, what the hell, what do you mean?

I’m always starving. And I said to the class, I said okay, so if you’re having cereal or toast for breakfast or avocado, smash on toast because it’s trendy. And then you’re having a muffin for morning tea or yogurt with fruit. I said the same thing as I did before, have an omelet, have this, this, this, this. Don’t have toast, don’t have orange juice. And try this for a couple of days and see how you feel. Well, the next week this young girl comes up to me and basically goes, I’ve done that every morning and I haven’t been hungry until one o’clock. I’ve never, and this girl’s like 22. She says, I’ve never been like that in my life. You’ve changed my life. I said, I haven’t done nothing yet. Now this is what you need to do. So I just gave her some advice and then I think it was five weeks later she came into class and it was hilarious. She’s talking to her friend. She goes, Andre, have a look at this. And it was a photo of a girl with her hands on her boobs

and standing there in her knickers like, you know, you see on how people sometimes take photos of micelles in their mirror. And there was one photo next to the other. And it was like, wow, what’s that? It was totally different. I think she said she’d lost like eight kilos in five weeks or something like that. And she says, I just did what you told me. Look at the difference. I never ever thought I’d look like this. And I said, well, it’s more about looks. It’s how you feel and stuff. So that’s one example. And then she’s gone on to share that with about 300 of her girlfriends and they all think she’s a legend. So that’s fantastic. But one of them is a guy who came to my first spin class at another club and did the class and I’m walking at the top of the stairs. He’s walking up the stairs at the end. He goes, oh, mate, that was a great class. Gee, you’re lean. You must train heaps. And I knew where the conversation was going to go

because he was a little bit overweight. It’s probably 105 kilos and he’s a bit taller than me. And essentially I said, oh, well, yeah, I do, but it’s not about that. It’s all about the food. And he goes, what do you mean? And I said, well, how many times do you come to the gym a week? He goes, oh, six times and kills me and I’m tired and I can’t lose this tummy. I said, all right, when you go home, because this was six o’clock, class finished at seven, I said, go home, have an omelet, no toast, no orange juice, no grog, no pasta bread, blah, blah. I said, do that for a couple of weeks or do that for a couple of days. And I said, what I want you to do is ring me this afternoon and tell me how it is. He rang me at four or five o’clock saying, I’ve never felt like this in my life after one day. So I said, do this for another three or four days and see what happens. Well, the following Monday he came to class. He said, right, I want to sign up to your program.

So he paid me whatever he paid me and he’s been doing it now for two months and he’s lost, I think, 12 kilos and he’s having to replace all these clothes. His whole family thinks he’s a legend. He stopped drinking alcohol because he was drinking a lot of alcohol. He’s only eating two times a day. Sometimes he’s only eating one times a day. He said it’s totally changed his life. So to be able to have the joy to teach people in group fitness and then have people change their lives like that, it’s just fantastic because he will never go back to what he used to do. Here we go again, some more drills because I’ve just been hammered with them at training and then you’ll get some people who’ve never done them before and then probably half the people have done them before and they think they’re great but they don’t quite understand the reason behind them. And so the reason we do them is because often the mistakes that we see in the video analysis,

they’ll come out in the drills. So for example, if someone, is there entering and extending forward in freestyle, if their fingertips are coming up to the surface and sort of putting the brakes on it, that’s going to slow them down and when we do some of the basic kicking drills on their front with the hands out in front of them, that floor or that area will come into that drill and the fingertips will come back up. So if we can get them to make that change within the drill and get the feel for the right thing to be doing, then it becomes a whole lot easier to change it in their swim stroke whereas if they try and just do that without going through the drill, it can be a lot harder to actually know what you want to achieve in the stroke. So that’s why we do the drills and a lot of times coaches just aren’t explaining the why behind them. That’s why we get some who roll their eyes at the word drills. Yeah. And as you said there,

the drills are a perfect way to actually identify weaknesses in movements and in performances of athletes. I mean, we use the anchoring drill for forward strikes. So we want to look at how an athlete is striking the ground with their foot. We look at foot recovery drills. We look at full stride cycle drills as well. And then once we’ve looked at everything from the belly button down, then we’ll start looking belly button up and have a look at what’s happening through the torso and through the movements of the arms. And just being able to break that down as you said and break it down in specific drills, you can identify what needs to be corrected. And I think one of the really cool things that we can bring into athletic training as well, and you can do this in any sport and swimming key as well, is once a coach has been able to identify where the weaknesses are in a specific athlete and they can give them the drills to rectify that,

then allowing each athlete to have their own warm-up period rather than having a whole squad of people doing the same warm-up, the same mobility exercises and getting them ready to then come into the conditioning phase for the coach. But if we can find a way to do individual warm-up and individual athletic prep work for each young athlete so that we can work on their weaknesses and make their weaknesses then a strength and then pull them into the conditioning phase together as a squad. But allow them to work on those little things that they need to work on in their warm-up before they come together as a team. For most sessions I know the swimmers will do a dry-land warm-up and there’s a bit of a process that they follow and the older swimmers know what it is and they’ve got to, you know, someone will lead the warm-up and these are sometimes a 9-10 year old kid to a leading a group of 15 other kids through the warm-up

and just giving the responsibility even to really young people. These kids are smart. They pick up on things very quickly and they want to take on that responsibility and they want to lead a group like that. So even just little things like that I see as being quite different than I see in many other clubs and squads. Well, I guess I learned that from Sam. I mean, I haven’t really seen it until Sam brought it in and he’s all about bringing young people out who don’t get in the voice. I mean, there’s a lot of young kids out there who don’t get the opportunity to lead and they’re very good leaders in their own right because you’ve got a few extra kids there who always put their hand up and want to lead so he’s all about others sharing the lead and taking on the session and running the program and once the kids have confidence and they know that they can do that and they don’t get put down or they don’t get talked over,

then it works really well and Sam’s been outstanding at that night. And look, we can go anywhere and we can get any kid to say, well, you lead and off they go and even if there’s no coach there, there’s some who just know, well, this is what we’ve got to do. Let’s start. We’re supposed to be at 9.30. If something’s happening and no coach there whatever it is may be, they just get their warm-up done and off they go and it’s nothing better to watch a young group of people take responsibility for themselves and get their warm-up done. Look, it’s what all coaches should aspire to. Otherwise, if the coach needs to be there for the program to run, it’s really not what you want. I always say, one of my thoughts is you are what you are when no one’s watching and if the program kicks on while no one’s watching, well, you’re doing something right. So I’ll take my hats off to Sam Fenton for that one. Yeah, that’s good. I love them.

I mean, I saw that attitude last week we had a brother and sister from the swim club who came along to one of our clinics and we had to demonstrate a drill and the young girl should put her hand straight up saying, I’ll demonstrate and this is in a group of adults and kids and she was the youngest one there but she put her hand up to demonstrate this drill and just didn’t hold back didn’t have any fear whereas everyone else wouldn’t dare to put their hand up to sort of do this in front of a group of people there. So that sort of attitude pays off a lot not only as a in that swimming environment but outside of the swimming environment in school and work and I see often a big difference between the kids who have gone through that sort of thing with sport and particularly through the Trouble Swimming Club and how that plays out in their their life outside of it because they’re not afraid to be seen and be heard put their hand up

introduce themselves to people like just saying hello and goodbye just the basics like that don’t get taught in school and there’s not even a lot of clubs or sports out there where they just teach the basics like that and it makes a huge difference to how you can progress in work especially later on in life. Well particularly I mean look it’s I know who you’re referring to there the young girl Olivia and her brother I mean they came to the club and they were very quiet shy young kids and look we’re going to allude to this anyhow I mean when a young person comes into the program or any program that I take over they’ve got to learn some basic skills and just some basic life skills and the first thing they’ve got to learn is to come in and say hello to me I mean just use my name and I’ll use your name it’s very very simple and then everyone we open the lines of communication and just look me in the eye get your hands out of your pocket

stand up tall don’t be afraid to I’ve got a number of very simple people principles number one is say hello say goodbye when they leave they’ve got to say goodbye give me a high five and say goodbye all the time say please if you want something say thank you when you get it if you make a mistake just say look you’re sorry don’t cover things up nothing worse than that and the most important one is use my name because the name is the most powerful part of a person’s being and you know you’re given a name you should be proud of it your parents gave you that name so use my name when you want something so another things like look when I talk as a coach you make sure you listen very hard and when you talk as a swimmer I’ll listen to you even harder these are just basic principles of dealing with people and around that those sort of principles and you get kids to lead in that environment you know that everyone is treated the same

they’re all everyone’s on that same base they have to have the same values they have to have the same principles we operate on and that creates your culture and the culture then is set and then when you go outside somewhere else they usually don’t get that sort of strict culture out there so we’ve got Olivia coming along saying oh can I can someone here that’s what she naturally does I want to lead I want to be part of this so to her to put her hand up that makes me very proud to hear that and it can start from a very young age get confidence in kids from a very young age and they’ll be awesome adults when they turn into adults most athletes and this doesn’t even just go for athletes this goes for any given day whether you’re in a job whether you’re just trying to have a great Saturday people when they wake up when they get to practice when they get to a competition they the first thing they think about is what’s missing I feel a little off today

maybe I feel like I’m only at 80% today and so now I’m missing 20% oh no why is it missing what’s wrong how is that going to affect me instead of focusing on I’ve got 80% to give so I’m going to give 80% today it took me a couple of years to learn that when I was a teenager competing it was probably 15, 16 years old that after doing it for a number of years where in the warm up I used to base how I think I would swim based on how I felt in the warm up and my times in the warm up but often there the correlation was actually if I felt like crap in the warm up and if my times were off a little bit that would be sometimes that the best that I would race and so why do you want to peak in the warm up you don’t want to peak in the warm up you want to peak in the race and there was no correlation with how I felt and what my times would be but it took a couple of years just to actually accept that and learn it so for someone who is maybe struggling with

whether it’s day to day life if there something bad has happened during the day and they’re focusing on what’s missing or if they’re in the warm up and they’re sore and they’re heavy and their focus is going to that instead of what they have got what are some strategies that they can use to help focus on the right things I had one swimmer write down literally sit there and write down every single thing that she brought to the table all the things that were her strength that she naturally did that she’s a hard worker she’s willing to make sacrifices all of her strengths and then even not just strengths but all of the work that she had put in all of the work on her kit count the work on her turns and she wrote down everything that was good everything that she really brought into helping her compete well and so I’ll tell you this funny thing was at first when I had her write it down she could barely get a few down because it’s so hard to naturally

think about the strengths that we already possess and what helps us do well what helps us compete well it’s so easy to think about the things like I said before the things we’re missing or the things that hold us back so you have to train yourself to focus yes on the positive absolutely that’s something that’s said every day especially in the field that I’m working on working in focus on the positive absolutely but focus on the things that you have control over and the things that actually help you and help your day the things that you can do I mean for instance for instance if you come into wake up one day and you’re feeling it say I’m at on a scale of one to ten I’m feeling like a four today like I don’t have much energy I’m dragging I had a late night last night didn’t sleep too well I’m feeling it a four most people look at and they say well crap you know I should be higher instead look at that four putting a number to anything helps

because it just makes it tangible say I’m at a four what am I going to do today to move from a four to a five not a four to a nine not a four to an eight but what is one thing that I’m going to do today to move from a four to a five maybe that’s I get a workout in because workouts really really make me feel better maybe it’s I go have your or lunch with someone that I know is going to cheer me up they’re going to push me get me more driven that day but if you focus on what can I do to just feel a little better to get a little better to put forth a little bit more effort then all of a sudden it comes back on you and you have more control over every single day it’s a choice it yes around things in the outside happen to you yes the you’re put in difficult positions yes it can be challenging yes things can be thrown at you that completely knock you down but every day you have a choice to do something that’s going to help you get better

and put you in a better mindset and put you in a better position to succeed or to you also have a choice to allow everything around you that’s happening to affect you where you are it’s just I think it resonates with people they’re like oh well she can do it then I can do it and it kind of feeds on itself when you see someone that looks like you I mean the cover of my book is a picture of me in a trisuit and I always think like if people are in book stores they probably put the brakes on and go what the hell is that it’s like you know but it’s talking about how it’s going for every woman like if you know no matter what side you are you can do the sport I mean there’s certain things you have to do and I’m also really big on educating so you know while you can try a sport in any size you should also be a good student of the sport you know you should learn the rules and you should be prepared for your races I mean even if you’re not going to be

the fastest one out there you have a duty and a responsibility to be a responsible racer and to be a courteous racer and to stay on the right you know stuff like that so it’s just kind of turned into a really neat community of people who want to be better people and use the sport of triathlon to become better people and that’s what my mission is really is just to kind of use fitness and triathlon to show women and men we have men in our tri club too that you know there’s a lot you can do and grow through getting to know yourself through this ridiculous sport with a sense of humor well you’ve gone from we’re talking about just before and you’ve gone from a roughly a 2 minutes to 205 sort of pace for a sprint distance triathlon down to um Port Mac half Ironman recently which is 1.9k and you’re around the 140 mark per 100 for that so that’s like 20-25 seconds per 100 faster across a distance which is sort of double in a bit for what you

were used to and that’s in the space of let’s say I mean even if it was 12 months from when you started the clinic like that’s a massive jump in the space of 12 months so what I want to sort of cover a little bit is some of the changes you’ve made to your technique and training and those sorts of things in order to do that because I’d say the majority of people who sort of come to us they a lot of them are around that 2 minutes plus range and I think having you made that huge jump it’s a good insight into how someone’s gone from that and to get well under the 2 minute pace so I mean first of all technique so what do you focus on now when you’re swimming as opposed to what you were focusing on beforehand? I’ve always been a big swimmer I’ve always done lots of distance so I think that the change for me has been focusing really on what I’m doing instead of just swimming I think I just used to go to the pool and swim and whatever

like my set said I’d do the distance whatever but I think since going in a week I actually really learned about why I was doing things so why I was actually implementing drills or why I was whatever the case may be so I was thinking about it was quality swimming instead of just quantity like I think before I don’t think my quantity has changed so much I don’t think I’m swimming further really because I’ve always been quite capable of doing long pool sets but I think it’s actually when I do a drill I don’t just do it because there’s a drill there I do it because I know there’s a purpose for it so making my swimming more I really think that’s it I think that’s the only real thing that’s changed as well as consistency like my consistency with my training has been heaps better and I don’t live where there’s pools in winter so I have to travel to swim and just making the effort to not drop swim sets like over winter and that sort of thing

whereas before I would before I sort of do seasonal ramp it up and try some season and not so much but I’ve seen that consistency is actually better for me what do you kind of look for like when someone comes to the swim lab where you are what’s the first thing you get them to do and what do you look for to kind of break it down the first thing I look for is I watch people walk down the hall and I look at their posture and I look at how they move to see if they move well because to me especially for triathlon swimming I’ve always said it’s like surf paddling and salsa dancing at the same time so very often I’ll get somebody that’s really tight in their hip flexors, lower lumbar IT band so getting them to move or even up kick was really hard and then I try to go with what somebody’s doing right and what’s easy for them because I don’t feel like I’m going to totally be able to revamp someone but there’s always something that people are doing right

even I’ll get runners come in and they’re rhythmic they can move, sometimes they’re a little too controlled where they don’t need to be controlled like through the air but I do try to look at what they’re doing right and then a lot of times I’ll just use tools or drills to get them so they’re not thinking because the thinking sometimes can be a huge problem and then they get in the swim and they’re actually thinking way too much and not even remembering that they need to enjoy it and they’re doing it for fun most people aren’t going to make the Olympic team in their swim and the whole point is to really remember why they’re doing it and it’s a pretty much a celebration of their own fitness and their lifestyle and to remember to enjoy themselves is really important I can relate to that I listened to an audio book last week, I can’t remember what it was but one of the premises of part of this book was the reason that people like to do

things and it doesn’t matter what it is, like all the thousands of different jobs there are out there or the thousands of different sports they could do what people actually get satisfaction from is the positive feedback loop so swimming for example it might be you make this slight change to what you’re doing in the recovery part of the stroke and you see your times get faster or it feels easier the positive feedback loop well I actually quite enjoy swimming and then you might change a different aspect of your stroke or you might change what you’re doing in your training and continuous positive feedback loop is what people actually enjoy so I was thinking about that and how it relates to the work that you do or the sport that you do for me I think about the coaching I get a real kick out of whether it’s doing a podcast like this and someone saying I really enjoyed that podcast with any what you mentioned here helped me take 5 seconds off

my 100 metre pace that’s what I really get a kick out of I think it’s the same thing for when I’m training in the pool is I can see that I put in the hard work for a training session I can see the results I really like that approach to working with people where it’s not about you may not be making the Olympic team but it’s about you enjoying yourself having fun with it and hopefully saying some improvement as you go well and I always call them opportunities for greatness and when you’re young you have a French test on Thursday and a track meet on Saturday but the older you get you really need to find those opportunities for greatness and by either entering something or working on your fitness I really think it helps keep people alive and feel that enjoyment of going after something so for someone who’s listening to this they might be in a similar mindset or situation with their swim time where they’re maybe a little bit frustrated with where they’re at

what things would you have them look at in terms of their training or their race strategy what was it for you that what introspection did helped you have that really good swim at Basso it was just sitting down and assessing what swims I was actually doing it’s quite easy to turn up to a squad and do a set depends on the set of course but you’re not thinking about what you’re doing you’re just either following the person in front or looking at the clock and just more often than not just trying to get through the set or even survive the set was sitting down and actually looking at what I was missing in my swimming or what I actually needed in my swimming I mean I was doing this for Insta but probably not the quality or not the quantity that I needed so actually sitting down and looking at what I was doing absolutely and my niece actually just started doing gymnastics I think it was last week and she’s only young she’s probably not even two years of age yet

but just the very basic stuff it’s mostly games and things like that but I thought she’s such a because the ability to move your body and have that kind of awareness and strength and flexibility that carries on through for the rest of your life I think it’s that sort of awareness will help in any sport whether it’s swimming whether it’s football so I really can really just see the importance of it particularly with swimming like we for the swimmers who come to us and they’re in that sort of more not elite range but just even top 10 top 20% for their age group in triathlon or swimming often just these quite minor changes they’re looking to make so talking about let’s say move your hand placement one or two centimetres very subtle changes and one of the big things that I I often try and get people to do is basically from the point where the hand enters the water in freestyle to the point where they extend out in front and then they’re about halfway

through the pool I like them to try and have an elevated wrist so basically the hand should be angled just slightly down from forearm so that way you can hold you’ve got this big paddle to work with as soon as you let that hand come back from the forearm or back from the wrist you lose half your paddle and you lose a lot of feel for the water and I see that takes a lot of time for people to get the feel for because they’re natural whether it’s habits or just training those changing the neural pathways to hold that position they just can take a while to get used to that change so yeah that’s why I see the body awareness is so important and like I’ve done I think yoga classes and Pilates classes in front of a mirror and even just how you feel something is often very different than how it actually looks so having that sort of feedback from either a teacher, a coach or the mirror is really helpful I mean absolutely it’s like

if you’re swimming swimming on your own and you don’t have a coach right and you might be feeling certain things but you really have no idea one of the things that I say to you say to people that I work with now in yoga it’s funny how much I coach full time for basically close to 20 years and how much of my coaching just even the exact things that I used to say to athletes that come into the yoga classes and one of them is when wrong feels right right feels wrong and right feels wrong yes spot on exactly right the first time you hear it it’s like okay yeah but yeah and that’s the biggest thing because it really challenges your brain then right and when you look at it it’s when you can gather in that feedback on your mat and when you were you know and this is one of the things that I really do when crafting yoga for swimmers is you look at those points that they’re going to get themselves into in the water and you have them doing a lot of those same

things but just in different angles or in different positioning and obviously you’re having to work against gravity and not buoyancy right so you’re still using a lot of that same engagement a lot of the same neural pathways but it’s challenging it in an unfamiliar environment so you have to learn to read your body with those engagements even more so I think that’s one of the beauties of yoga and how you can relate it right back to the water one of the things we talk about at the start is like kind of the rotation that the elbow makes as it goes from the catch position so the extension position out in front and then moves into the catch and pull through where so you can get the forearm the hand pressing back and get that forearm vertical so we kind of go through this exercise where we get people to make this rotation with their elbow and then we show them some videos of it to show them what elitism is do compared to those that aren’t

quite as good and we go through that but then there’d be maybe one percent of people who could actually just translate that into their swim without drills but everyone else is going to need to go through some different sort of drills or exercises in the water to build up that feeling to make it a part of their stroke yeah absolutely and to me I mean everything’s in physical activity as a memory based system whether it’s all neuromuscular memory and just memory in itself but for the pathways to be developed it takes repetition of doing something a certain way and so yeah I agree with you 100% you need to be doing and that’s why sometimes you need to compartmentalize areas the stroke and specific work on those areas maybe even take it on to dry land and work in a kinesic way through dry land movements and then try and bring that into the pool but without the repetition of and the habit forming of doing something the right way

those neural pathways they aren’t strengthened and the myelin sheath between the neurons aren’t strengthened so as soon as someone then goes back into a work related set they quite often they’ll slip out of the patterns that you’re trying to develop so you know I’ve always been quite a firm believer in trying to get stuff right before too much work is put onto an athlete because I think through tiredness swimmers tend to find the path of least resistance in terms of muscular tiredness and it’s often the most correct stroke that is the most tiring stroke and so something will give at some point if the work is unrelative to what you’re trying to change technically it’s so true to give you an example of that two weeks ago I went to there’s a swim lab which is basically an endless pool with some camera setup I went to the swim lab which I’ve set up near where I live actually and it’s taken of my stroke because it’s been at least a year and a half since I’ve

done that and I had a look at it and there’s a few things I wanted to change and so over the last two weeks I’ve been working on changing those things and yesterday and it’s starting to come together with some slower swimming but it’s very hard to hold at pace for more than 25 or 50 metres but it’s a lot more fatiguing than what I’m used to so I feel like if I was to do an open water swim of 2K I’m just going to go back to my old ways and yesterday I did a part of the main set was just a K with a pool boy on it was a aerobic pace but I was going a little bit harder but after 100 metres or so my stroke was just going straight back to normal and it’s going to take me probably four, five or six weeks of constant focus and practice to actually make that stroke number one feel good but number two to be able to maintain it and do it without feeling like it’s a lot more work and so one of the things I get a bit of is someone will

do a session together or they’ll come to a clinic and the next session they might be going slower and they might be a lot more fatigued and that’s kind of what you want if they’re making changes because they’re going to be using muscles that they’re not used to, that are weaker and it’s going to take some time for them to actually build that up if they’re not so they’re not rotating enough and it’s going to feel very different it’ll feel slower and unusual but over the course of time if they can just keep practicing that even if it doesn’t feel good it’s going to work out faster for them Yeah that’s so true it reminds me of a concept that I picked up, one of my fortunate areas of education that I went through being a high performance sport New Zealand coach was a course they have over here which is three year coaching course called the Coach Accelerator Program and one of the concepts we learnt there was an area that was described as

the pit of discomfort and apparently in all areas of learning it’s pretty much essential that you’ve got to go through the pit of discomfort to come out the other side of the pit to learn it and to develop it but there will always be the effectiveness of learning something new at first and the tiringness especially for an athlete of having to go through the repetitions of trying to do something completely different and completely new just the awkwardness of how things feel and I think that’s a really important point for athletes that are learning is that it’s something that I constantly try and reinforce with them is that they have to be comfortable at being uncomfortable if they want to improve because it is very much going through that uncomfortableness that’s a sign that they are making some improvement and it sort of goes beyond logic and everyone thinks you’ll tell them something and it’ll instantly work but it’s really

very much a one step back to go two steps forward type of scenario that is it’s more than what usually happens it’s what is supposed to happen if the athletes can all understand that learning to get better is an uncomfortable thing to do and if they are uncomfortable they are probably making those right steps and moving forward as long as the coach’s eye is on them and the coach is saying yes that is what I want then it’s probably a very good thing and they need to be severe with it. Is there anything else that comes to mind that you think would help someone who is preparing for a 20k swim or the right nest swim anything that we haven’t covered? Listen the first thing that I can think of and I think it’s very important you must get your technique right before you do that sort of distance you know your 20k because doing 20km with bad technique is just a long way if you just correct the angle of your hands where your high elbows

or where your hand enters the water this it might make it a lot easier for the person and you don’t get as tired you know and prevent injuries as well I see people coming out with sore shoulders but it actually had partial tears during the swim so I think I’m very important to get the technique right prepare yourself mentally you must go with a positive attitude because in the middle of the race everything is going to start to hurt you know I mean you might not be getting sunburnt but you have the sun you’re hungry and you’re thirsty but you can’t drink that much you know you can’t eat and then you have the jellyfish as well I mean last year I didn’t have but you’re getting stung by jellyfish you need to be mentally prepared for this and expect the worst really you know expect the worst to be in a lot of pain but and also expect the worst but stay positive you really have to sit and be comfortable with yourself and in your own company

and make sure you’re not going to go to the dark place because that’s what makes it I think a bit traumatic of a swim so just staying positive really one of the mistakes I would make when I started coaching was to think that I could change someone’s stroke and change someone’s swimming in one session and while you can absolutely make some changes to your stroke in the space of one hour two hours three hours if you’re going to make that change a habit and if you’re going to be able to maintain that when you’re racing it’s going to take you more than thinking about it for one or two hours it’s probably going to take you a little over two months and there was a study released in the European Journal of Social Psychology by a researcher Philippa Lalli and her team of researchers and they surveyed 96 people over a 12 week period to find out exactly how long it takes to start a new habit or to form a new habit or to look at that differently how

long it took them to replace an old habit so if you think about that in terms of technique well how long is it going to take you to be able to maintain any changes that you’re looking to make and what they found over the course of 12 weeks was the participants they chose a new habit and reported each day how automatic the behaviour felt and at the end of the period they analysed results and found that the average time it took for the participants to pick up a new habit was 66 days and this is pretty much along the lines of what I’ve seen with swimmers who have come along to clinics or who join us in the membership there’s pretty much the length of time that it takes someone to really see dramatic improvements or dramatic changes in their stroke so to think that you’re going to be able to think about or make a change to your stroke in the space of a couple of hours and be able to maintain that it’s very unrealistic certainly

you can make some improvements in a short space of time but to then to be able to maintain it and not have to think about it it’s going to take you a little over two months so the rule of thumb I like to use for becoming a better swimmer or becoming better at anything really is 66 days and 18 months so the 66 days is how long it’s going to take you to replace or change a habit and the 18 months is how long I like to give something before you expect to see a dramatic improvement most people don’t stick with something long enough so let’s say you want to train for the English channel you want to prepare for it to try and do that without too much of a swimming background to try and do that in six months is an unrealistic target in all likelihood you’re going to have to prepare for 18 months if not a little bit longer I know swimmers who have had this goal in mind and they’ve started two three years out to build up to it because they

want to be certain they want to have that certainty that when they get to they get over to England and they’re ready to swim it that they’ve done everything they can to prepare so if you have the mindset of I’m going to stick at this thing for 18 months and if at the end of 18 months I’m not going to I want to stop it or it’s not something I want to do then that’s a pretty good benchmark to know whether or not you you’re going to succeed at this thing but give it enough time to actually make a change and if you think about how long it’s going to take you to to become stronger to become fitter to learn what you need to when it comes to racing in swimming or triathlon to make mistakes and learn from them it’s going to be quite a long cycle so have that long-term mindset and think 66 days as how it’s going to take you to replace any habits that you need to replace and then 18 months is the length of time that you should really give something

to give it a good shot to know whether or not it’s something you want to stick with or it’s a length of time you need to be able to really see a dramatic improvement in whatever you’re working towards and today’s episode is about when to be in the moment with your swimming and when to be out of the moment and if you’ve listened to any of our podcasts from the past or watched any of our videos on YouTube or the things that we put up at effortlesswimming.com you know we’ve got a big focus on deliberate practice doing and concentrating on the right things with every lap that you do every stroke that you take in order to change your habits and improve your technique so when it comes to swimming being in the moment is really important to continuous improvement and making those little gains over time to become a better swimmer but there’s also times where you’re just need to be out of the moment you’re going to have to project

5, 10, 15 years in the future and even 2 or 3 months into the future and also look back at things that you’ve done and be grateful for some of the things that you’ve been able to put yourself through so for example if you’re in the middle of a training session you’re towards the end of a set and you’re needing to dig deep and you’re needing to push hard sometimes it can help if you can look at that a race or your big event that you’ve got coming up and to be able to sort of draw on the expectation that you’ve got for yourself and draw on the feelings that you want to have and the results that you want to have in that race to be able to think about that and keep it in the back of your mind as you’re having to push hard at the end of a workout or a training session whereas if you don’t reflect on that sometimes there may not be enough meaning or enough motivation there to drive you to work as hard as you could in that set

being able to project into the future and be out of the moment for at least a little bit of that session or a little bit of that time when you’re swimming that can make a big difference to how hard you push yourself and it also helps to look back so looking back over the last 5 years, 10 years, maybe 20 years and be able to reflect and be grateful for some of the things that you’ve been able to do and being able to achieve so for me when I look back at the early mornings that I had as I was going through school where I’d get up at 4.15 in the morning would go through a 45 minute to an hour gym session and then an hour hour and a half training session in the pool be finished by 7.30 before most kids have actually woken up I look back at that and think how lucky I was to have that opportunity and to go through that sort of development and chance to push myself and challenge myself at such a young age when it’s not something that’s available

to a lot of people when I have that sort of mindset and look back on it that way it’s very different than if I think well I missed out on so much sleep or I missed out on a couple of parties here and there as I was growing up a very different way to think about things so being able to be out of the moment where you’re projecting forward you’re looking at what you’ve got coming up and what you want to achieve over the next 5, 10 years of your life and being able to look backwards as well how much you appreciate or how grateful you were for the opportunities and you’ve had in the things that you’ve done in the past it changes the way you think about your exercise, your swimming and your sport so for me if I have to get up early in the morning and I’m I missed out on a few hours sleep and I might have only got 5 hours if I think about how lucky I am to have this opportunity to test myself and challenge myself I think about that

very differently than if I’m gradually getting out of bed thinking about how much I want to go back to sleep so it just changes the way you think about things so to have that balance of being in the moment and being out of the moment can help you develop as an athlete and if you’ve looked at any of the videos that we’ve put up on YouTube recently one of the things you know is I like to avoid extreme ideologies so if you go too far one way chances are it’s not 100% correct so to be somewhere in the middle when it comes to for me I think of the different ways that we like to teach swimming and coach freestyle not everyone’s going to swim exactly the same there’s very different styles when it comes to freestyle technique and teaching people what works best for them so that’s why I don’t like to teach this is the one way to swim fast we adapt what we’re coaching to whoever we’re working with so to be able to to be able to

go back and forth and find that optimum for each person is what we like to aim for it’s not black and white you’ve got to be in the moment you’ve got to be out of the moment and you’ve got to sort of switch between the two and you’re not going to have to be in the moment all the time we did the first video analysis and I actually saw myself swimming and I thought oh my god that is awful like where do I start where do we start to fix this and I was like the arms are wrong, the heads wrong the underwaters were awful and I was like oh my god

and visually I’m a very visual person so seeing it seeing what I was doing wrong was very much a revelation for me and once I saw what I was doing wrong I could then visualise how to fix it and you told me what to do to fix it so that made a big difference for me and how much were you training back then 12-80 months ago and how much are you training today back then I was training I was doing squad three times a week and now I’m probably in the pool doing squad five to six times a week yeah nice and that’s I mean my rule of thumb is you really need to be in the water three times a week to see a good amount of improvement and once you do step it up to that five or six times a week and it’s not possible for all triathletes because they’re busy running and riding but I know like you’ve just started triathlons but for the people who can increase their swim mileage each week and get in five or six times a week it makes such a massive difference

and you see that with your swimming as well you’re also doing competitions with masters and you’ve just started triathlons can you talk a little bit about that and when you started and what got you into it I guess my coach at the time Todd Robinson got me into masters and I was absolutely terrified and I remember marshalling for my first event and going oh my goodness I haven’t been in the marshall intense since I was about 12 years old and yeah got into the water and swam as much as I could and yeah I had fun you know it wasn’t as serious as what I thought it would be it was just fun there’s all these people who want to be there who are happy to be there and they have a great day and yeah I really enjoy it I haven’t done too much of masters I just had a masters meet last weekend which was great and yeah really enjoy it really love it so when I can get there yeah it’s really good and I think it’s I really enjoy racing masters as well

I used to coach a masters squad for about seven years and I just particularly for anyone who’s 20, 21 years or older it’s a good way to just be able to compete and get a benchmark of where your speed’s at, where your time’s at and just to be able to challenge yourself because I feel like those sorts of things where you actually do get to test yourself and put yourself in competition mode they’re often the most rewarding things that you can do whether it’s a running race or a swim race or a triathlon just being able to put yourself to the test and get your body to that stage where you’re trying to tell your mind to shut up because it wants you to stop swimming or you know just to be able to challenge yourself physically in that way and that’s also a mental challenge I find that it helps a lot in other aspects of your life as well and we ran into each other in the Gold Coast where Nationals was and that was your first meet

wasn’t it at Masters Nationals That was my second Masters meet and Todd signed me up for all these races I think it was a 400 free a 200 free I think it was a 200 breaststroke I can’t remember what else 400 free I can’t do that I was just so nervous and the first 400 free was a disaster because I just I’ve got to pace myself I’ve got to calm down, relax pace this out and I’ll be fine and I just went hell for leather the first 50 was a PB the first 100 was a PB the first 200 was a PB and I had to hold on for the next 200 and it was that was not good but it was a PB because I’ve never done it before yeah and that’s the only way you learn sometimes as much as you can learn from other people’s mistakes when it comes to something like that you’ve often got to go through the feeling of going too hard at the start to realise this isn’t good and then once you get a bit more race experience you can find that you pace it better and the same goes in training too

one of the most noticeable differences I see between people who have got a fair bit of experience in the water and those at donors the ability to be able to hit the times that they’re trying to hit and to be able to vary their pace and that’s probably something that you’ve you’re probably doing quite well at now I would assume is that you can you’ve got more than just one pace that a lot of people often start with when they begin swimming yep definitely at squat doing squat so many times a week and just getting used to okay this isn’t easy this is a moderate this is a fast this is a 70.3 pace you know we go through all those and we practise swimming at all those different paces so you really need to learn your stroke and you know even if I’m swimming 100 I can pretty much I pretty much know before I finish what the time is going to be I’m usually pretty close sometimes I’m surprised a nice surprise but yeah doing a lot of that

getting to know your stroke and your pace and your stroke rate it just comes with time in the water and I think because I’m just starting out at triathlons as well you know the running and the bike it’s time running and it’s time on the bike as well like anything you know I tell my kids you get what you work for