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. In this podcast episode, I want to talk about total body force swimming. There’s a triathlon coach, probably the best triathlon coach out there called Brett Sutton. And I’m sure if you are a triathlete, you’ve heard of him before. He’s the coach of multiple Olympians and Kona champions. Just got a huge history of success in triathlon coaching and huge history of success in having developing good swimmers as triathletes. And he wrote this three part article on total body force swimming, which is basically the way that he teaches his athletes to swim and keeping in mind that he typically works with very high level triathletes and they’re very fit and not all of them have got a swimming background. But I wanted to go through this these articles here and just give you my take on it

and you’ve probably heard a lot of these concepts talked about before because we teach a fairly similar method if we’re working with triathletes. But I think it’s a very useful article to go through. And I just want to give you my take on it. And but really big fan of a lot of this stuff here. So in this article he says, so why total body force swimming? So here he says, the first point to reiterate is that we do not try and teach our swimmers the theory used by the best swimmers in the world. We find that most age group athletes and coaches have tried to follow the line of theory of modeling off what the very best swimmers do, and then applying it to triathlon. We do not believe this is effective. And as you’ve probably seen, in a way, yeah, I sort of follow that path as well. I mean, if you’re trying to replicate someone who’s been swimming since they were three years old, and is built like a swimmer, you know, as in like really

long limbs, six foot four, then it’s going to be very difficult to to try and replicate that if you’re not of the same background and body type. He says here replicating the mechanics of a Michael Fultz swimstroke, for example, simply will not work. Instead of trying to copy the stroke of a person who’s been swimming 80k a week for 10 plus years, and who is a completely different physique to us, and whose event is a completely different distance in a different sport, we instead aim to find the swim stroke that is optimal to each individual. Yep, absolutely. Agree with that. There’s no one size fits all you’ve got to do. You’ve got to find a stroke that suits you. We trained for triathlon, not swimming. These are two separate sports and we therefore train the swim component as such. If our sport was speed swimming or pool swimming, we would likely practice an entirely different stroke. Our sport, however, involves open water swimming with a bike and run

after it. We train accordingly. And I completely agree with that as well. So if you’re if you’re doing triathlon and you’re racing in a wetsuit, it’s all open water, you’ve got dozens or hundreds of other people around you, then it’s going to be a different stroke than if you were doing a 50 free style, for example. He says here, total body force goals implement a stroke that we can replicate over and over without breaking down approximately 1500 times for our Olympic distance athletes and 3800 times for our Ironman athletes. When working on a swim stroke, our priority consideration is how do I tie a least a stroke where we can attain the necessary volume in training without causing injury. Also a stroke allowing the volume without causing excessive fatigue levels. We have two other disciplines, bike and run to train for also rhythm and balance now stroke. Our swim stroke is dictated by our breathing pattern, whether it be one side only or by the

actual breathing. The breathing pattern is critical to helping us find both balance and rhythm in the water. And then talks about a video there. And then he goes on to the stroke itself. So let’s have a look at the next one, which is part two. So here he goes into a little bit more of the mechanics and the technique of it. So in this one here, he says the specifics of total body force swimming. He says, we do not aim to feel the water. We do not focus on trying to feel the water. Sorry, folks, but finding a feel for the water is not going to happen in 30 years of coaching I’ve yet to see one triathlete who can feel the water of the 24 Olympic swimmers I have trained for were able to feel the water. Very, very few of the top swimmers in the world will ever feel the water. And in a way, yeah, I somewhat agree with that is that you’ve got to be in the water a lot to have and train a lot to really get what we

classify as a feel for the water. But that said, you know, in a way, you know, with the swimmers that I’ve worked with, when we do improve their catch in the their pool, in whichever ways we do it using different drills or different concepts, they have a better they have a better hold of the water and they can they know they can feel that they have a better hold of the water and they know when they’re doing the right thing and the wrong thing might be kind of different to what he’s talking about there. But I do I do definitely know that when people make changes to their catch in their pool and they improve it, that they can feel that difference. And you wouldn’t necessarily classify that as the same as a feel for the water. But I think you tend to you tend to know, once you’ve made an improvement with what’s happening under the water. And he says here, we teach our athletes to use their whole body to create force. The

power comes from the body, not the arms. The force we generate initiates from the hips transfers through our body with our arms simply being the levers, just like throwing or hitting a ball or throwing a punch in boxing. In total body force swimming, the force also starts from the rotation of the hips. And that’s yeah, completely agree with with that because if you are just using your legs or just using your arms to swim and you’re not getting that use of the entire body, you’re going to become tired very quickly. So we really want to get that get the hips to connect up with the rest of the stroke. And we’ve seen, I mean, we’ve done this with a lot of swimmers by improving their timing of the stroke. So for example, sometimes I’ve had swimmers who have joined our membership, for example, and they’ve sent me some videos, and we see that their timing is way out there. Starting to catch much too early. And they’re not reaching, extending

enough. And so there’s nothing connected. And it’s like their hips are rotating out of sync with the rest of their body. So nothing’s connected. And then when we get the right timing happening, then we see that alright, they started to connect up their catch with the rotation of the hips and all that sort of stuff. And it makes a huge difference to the effort that they’ve got to put in for the return on their times. To generate the force, the hips roll to the breathing side and then back to center. We think of it as a pole through the top of the head or like a chicken on a skewer at a rotisserie. We turn the pole to breathe, and then we bring it back to the center. And again, you’ve probably heard me talk about that similar sort of concept. Where, yes, imagine you’ve got this pole through your spine, and we want to keep everything nice and long. And then, obviously, when we want to re-rotate, we still sort of keep it on that pole

or that skewer and bring it back to center. And if you saw our Greg Peltunary analysis, so this is an analysis we did on YouTube of Greg Peltunary. He got the second fastest time in the 1500 quite recently. If you look at his stroke, he’s kind of got and it’s pretty common with distance swimmers. On his breathing side, he’ll turn to the side with his shoulders, and he’ll sort of load up on that side, and then he’ll really bring it back with quite a bit of force. And you see this great connection from that hand coming back over the return of the head to the center, as well as the rotation of the hips. And you see this great connection happen, and he really kind of loads up on that side. And again, you see that a lot with really good swimmers. And I think that’s probably what he’s talking about here. On the breathing pattern, many age group athletes attending our training camps have the preset notion that they must bilateral breathe.

Whilst we have some great swimmers who do bilateral breathe, not everyone needs to do this. Bilateral breathing suits the needs of some individuals, however the majority of age group athletes tend to be more suited to a one-sided breathing pattern. Once a breathing pattern has been established, always keep it the same. We use the term pick and stick. Whether it be fast, easy, short speed, long endurance training or races, athletes should concentrate on ways, on always maintaining the same breathing pattern. And I agree with that as well. If I’m teaching age group swimmers, you know, like teenagers or young kids, totally I’ll teach them to breathe bilaterally. It’s a great skill to have. But if I’m teaching an adult who doesn’t have a swimming background and they are best suited to breathing on one side, I’m not going to, sometimes I will, but very rarely will I focus on you’ve got a bilateral breathe. I think often it can be a waste of time

because when you’re racing, when you’re training, a lot of people prefer the one side and some people will say, well, that can lead to injuries, that can lead to an unbalanced stroke. But as we know, an unbalanced stroke or a stroke that’s not symmetrical isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, maybe it can lead to shoulder problems if you’ve got some issues with your technique. But there is no, there is no problem breathing to the one side. And we’re talking about triathletes here, so if you are teaching young kids, then I think it’s good to breathe bilaterally, at least know the skill. But otherwise, yeah, it’s sometimes it can be a waste of time to focus on that. Rhythm and balance. Total body force swimming gives both rhythm and balance. This is the X factor to improving the overall speed through the water. How we do this is specific to the individual. As mentioned above, our swim stroke is dictated by our breathing pattern, whether

it be one side only or bilateral breathing, or as a two, two, four pattern. The breathing pattern is critical to helping us find both balance and rhythm in the water. To find balance in the water, we do not need to be doing the identical action on both sides of the body, letting go of the false conception that we need to be symmetrical in the water has paved the way for many swinging breakthroughs. Both of our arms do not have to go under our body. We often have one arm tracking a lot wider than the other. And that is okay. We do not have to swim with two bent elbows above the water. For many age group athletes, we find the best fluid dynamics come when breathing every second stroke with one straight arm recovery. The straight arm can be either the breathing arm or the non-breathing arm depending on the athlete’s natural side. How the arm moves through the recovery, a high bowling action or a low grass cutting or a helicopter action is

determined by both the breathing pattern, the natural efficiency of the movement, and the flexibility of the athlete. And he says here that to be crystal clear, the flexibility is not important in swimming. We advise a stroke technique to suit the flexibility of the individual athlete. We do not try and make the athlete more flexible to try and swim a predetermined textbook stroke. What I’d say on that is often sometimes people are very stiff with the way they’re with just in general. And I think my ability is one of those things that look at it will take you a number of weeks, often a number of months to improve it depending on what it is. But that said sometimes it’s important to improve mobility from what I’ve seen. What comes to mind is I’ve been working with a couple of guys in our membership who appear to have very tight hip flexors and they struggle to get their legs above their torso. So like their legs are just dropping well down

below the line of their body. And I think it’s probably a combination of tight hip flexors and weak glutes. And so I’m giving them a couple of minutes a day of hip stretches and some single leg glute bridges just to help improve it. Because once they get that up it’s going to make a big difference. But I do agree with the concept of like we don’t want to, I’m not going to have someone focus on just stretching out their ankles for 30 minutes a day just to necessarily improve their kick depending on the person. So I think that’s true. Like again you just want to work with what the swimmer’s got and try not go too far from what their natural tendencies are. So I do sort of somewhat agree with that. The two straight arms recovery stroke is also effective and can often work especially when combined with a butterfly kick instead of a freestyle kick for certain athletes. I sort of know what he’s talking about there. I haven’t seen

many elite athletes kind of do like a dolphin kick but I kind of I know the motion that he’s talking about. And if you look at someone like Janet Evans, she doesn’t have a dolphin kick so to speak like both her legs aren’t together but she’s got very like the kick is like it’s a very minimal kick and it’s almost like a butterfly or a dolphin kick with her hips there. And I’m wondering if that’s what he’s talking about. With the hand entry we enter our hand into the water in line with our shoulder not our nose. So that’s our train track sort of philosophy that we talk about. This way we avoid the fishtail we see in so many age group athletes. If we enter our hand in line with our nose given the momentum of the entry the hand will cross the midline. There is no way around it. It will not stop at the nose. Newton’s third law tells us if we make an action at the front of the stroke, i.e. cross the midline, it will have a reaction at the

back of the stroke fishtail. That’s a good way to think of it. And then head position. Last but not least we do not point our nose down at the bottom of the pool. We break the water in line with our forehead and look forward to watch our hand enter the water before turning to breathe. I agree with most of that. So

I don’t often swimmers have been told put your head down, look down, but that caused them to bury their head. If your head is completely submerged in the water, you’re probably going to feel like it’s you kind of feel like you don’t know where you’re going because you’re looking so far down. And if you look at most top swimmers, and particularly most top triathlon swimmers is the top of their head is above the water. So I like to say, you know, break the water with kind of above your forehead, not necessarily a forehead. But if you are swimming in a wetsuit or saltwater, yeah, look, you’ll be sitting a bit higher and that’s roughly where it might be. So yeah, I agree with that. I like to think about looking forwards one or two meters in front, as opposed to straight down. And it’s much better than just yeah, looking looking too deep there. And in terms of he says look forward to watch our hand enter the water before turning to

breathe. I don’t some swimmers will do that. And I don’t mind it, but I wouldn’t actively try and look at my hands going into the water. I would say that’s the heads are going to come up a little too high for most people. But as I mean, everyone’s different. Again, Janet Evans, she really looked up a lot before turning her head to breathe. So it is a it is a valid way to swim. But I wouldn’t necessarily encourage everyone to sort of look up too high before turning the head to breathe.

And then he says he determining the stroke and breathing pattern that is most efficient for an individual is not commonly achieved in one single swim workout is a process of experimentation and trial and error. Timing a single hundred interval is not a method we would recommend to decide upon a stroke. A stroke an athlete can maintain for 1500 to 3800 meters is preferable to one that is great for 100 meters, but then falls apart, especially under pressure of race day for us technique under fatigue is is the key. A coach on deck with an eye for fluid dynamics is ideally the best way forward here. Once the stroke is decided upon the athlete can then go away and confidently swim, ideally without the need to overthink incorporating tools such as pullboys and paddles will further assist us in developing the stroke. The tools can be used to develop swim specific strength, but the choice of shape and size for each individual swimmer is

critical to TBF swimming. The correct choice of paddles can help correct swim technique without the athlete thinking and hence avoiding analysis paralysis. One of the main killers of age group swim performance. So yeah, some really good points there. When I’m working with some as I like to keep it simple, no more than three things to think about, but ideally it’s going to be one or two. And if those one or two things can be a cue, like, you know, it might be like length out in front or or it might be like something to do with the catch or the pool. Then that’s a good way to do it because we don’t want to be overthinking it. And when we see some as overthinking it, the timing gets thrown off. So the way I kind of had this taught to me is that there’s a guy, a performance coach Nam Baldwin, and he tries to teach his elite athletes and a lot of them are surfers and snowboarders and sort of that like the X Games kind of sports. And what he

what he says, what he has them do like a really simple exercise for them to be in the moment and be present is he’ll have two tennis balls and he will face them about two meters apart. He’ll throw them a ball, they’ll catch it. And then just as they catch it, he’ll he’ll throw the other ball. So they’re sort of constantly throwing balls between each other. And if you take your attention off the ball that’s coming to you and you’re getting ready for that one after it, then you’re not going to catch that ball. And so by doing that exercise, he teaches them to focus on only the thing that’s happening in the now. And it’s the same thing when you’re swimming, if you’re thinking about if you’re sort of in your head too much, your timing will get thrown out. And if your timing is out by point one or point two of a second, then you’re not going to get that connection through the body. You might sort of lose hold of the water. So we just

want to really keep things simple and be able to dial in and focus in on how it feels. And when we’re present in that, particularly in a race, of course, but in like in a set, if we just dialed into that rhythm and that timing and like that breathing pattern like he talks about, it is it is a fantastic way to be able to to maintain good, good speed and good times across an entire set or in cross across an entire race. But if we focus too much on our technique, then we sort of we lose it and the times will suffer as a result of it. So some really good points there. Now he’s got a third part here, which I won’t go into but I might even just link to this in our notes here, sort of talking about difference between men and women and so on. But I think those first two are probably better articles for all the most relevant ones for most people. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I’ll link to these articles in our show notes, which you

can find at effortless swimming dot com. And you can read those there. And if you’re not a member already, then to become a member, just go to the website and you’ll find the membership button there. And that’s where we’ve got all of our stroke courses, our technique courses. And you can see all of the drills that we recommend, whether you are a triathlete or an open water swimmer, or even a competitive pool swimmer. So thanks again for listening. And we’ll be back soon with another episode. I’ve got quite a few podcast episodes coming up. And I hope you enjoy them. If you haven’t left a review in the iTunes store for the podcast, I’d love it if you left an honest review there, because that helps us get in front of more people. So please do that. And I’ll see you next week with another podcast episode.