The day that I did the 131, I could feel my lats the next day. And I remember you saying, two years ago, that your power in your stroke comes from your lats. I thought it came from your biceps, or I mean, I didn’t know. And then I thought, I remember writing back to you. I said, what are your lats? Where are they? 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 Chuck Ryan. And over the last few episodes, and for the next few episodes, I want to feature people who have been members for a number of months or a number of years. Because I want to show you that to improve your swimming, it’s a learned process. Everyone can improve their swimming. And a lot of it comes down to technique. And Chuck, you are someone who has made a huge change

to their swimming in the last two and a half years of being a stroke analysis member and with us working together. And we were talking about it earlier that we just looked back at your very first video from July, I think June, July in 2018. 2018, 2018, I think, actually. It was 2018, yeah. Yeah, it was a little early. But it has been such a huge difference. And you sent me a post the other week saying that you got down to 130 or 131 for 100 yard swim, where you were no way near that when you first started. Where were you at when you first joined the membership? And why did you decide to join? Well, I took up swimming probably 10 years ago, just for general fitness, with no real plan. Just join a pool, go to the pool, midday at work, kind of a way to relax at work, reach three or four times a week, and just swim. I mean, whatever you could do. It was usually backstroke and a really lousy breaststroke. Not much freestyle because it was exhausting.

I could probably do 100 yards and 215 or 220 and be absolutely just beat by the end of that. So I generally avoided doing the freestyle. I would even do side stroke or elementary backstroke. But it just got to the point where you see these videos of people who start out not being able to swim and then suddenly they can do these things freestyle and they get their times down and they’re doing Ironman. They’re doing Half Ironman. It’s why can’t I do that? I have the motivation. I don’t know that I have the motivation to do Ironman, maybe one of these days. But you just decide, well, I’m kind of wasting my time here and I’m not having that much fun. I really want to understand how you move through the water efficiently. And in the case of the name of your program effortlessly, I wouldn’t say it’s effortless, but it certainly has becoming with less effort. So you figure out, you’ll watch a couple of your publicly available videos

and then you think, well, I would really like to get into this more. And I remember being really scared to quote unquote apply because what am I going to say? I mean, I’m an idiot with regard to swimming. And I didn’t know what kind of people you’re taking. I mean, I see you’re taking triathletes and it’s very intimidating to a lot of people to think that they’re working with someone who works with people like that or works with really high level or even has worked with Olympic swimmers. So I quite timidly wrote, I don’t even remember what I wrote. I kind of remember what I wrote. And you said, hey, you look seem like the kind of person that we’d like to have or that would get something out of this program. And I thought, well, I hope so. I’m really not sure what I’m getting into. And well, here we are. So what used to take 220, now I can do in 131, 130. I can do it consistently. I’m trying to do a 400 yards and try

to get it down to seven minutes, seven and a half minutes with less effort. I’m sure I can do that in the next couple of months. So like I said, that’s where I’m coming from here. Yeah. And I can totally see the maybe intimidation about joining a program like this and not knowing it from the inside but looking from the outside, thinking that maybe you’re not good enough at the time to apply. And is this actually going to help me? Because I mean, especially if you don’t necessarily come from a swimming background, if you’re really struggling with maybe making 100 or 400 meters with your freestyle, it’s like, wow, I feel like a real beginner. And it’s a sport that can sort of take someone with a lot of confidence, but if they get in the water and they can’t swim, it’s like you feel like you’re starting from scratch and it feels like a very daunting thing to learn. So I’m glad that you did apply and we started working together.

And some of the things that we saw in that initial video were looking a long way forward. Legs were dropping a lot. And as a result, really hard to get the arms out and so on. And one of the first things we worked on was balance and just minimizing drag. And you said at the start of this call before we were talking that you don’t know how the improvement in body position came along, but it just started to improve. Can you remember some of the things that you first started working on or putting your attention to in the first sort of three to six months? Well, I can tell you things I started to put less attention to because they realized they weren’t only that important and I thought they were. One of those is the kick. I think I watched a podcast that you’d done with. I think his name was Carsten the other day it was on. And he mentioned the kick and that he thought that that was so important and that that’s where all your propulsion comes from.

And once I realized that that’s completely wrong, at least for someone at my level to just not focus on that at all or not really focused on it much, do a forebeat kick I think is what I usually do. Once I dispensed with that whole notion and started to focus on upper body, that’s when some things really started to click. And then the second thing I ignored was I was just obsessed with bilateral breathing.

Good swimmers must breathe on both sides. It has to be symmetrical. It has to look just a certain way. And I realized after watching some Olympic swimmers they don’t do that.

That’s not really necessary. It’s probably a good skill to have perhaps in open water where you’re dealing with a wind from one side or the other. But I dispensed with that whole notion about bilateral breathing and just stuck to the side that works best for me. And then the legs started to just come up after about a year of working with you. And I think I remember being very excited when I could do 145 for 100 yards with 95% effort

but I was doing it. And so that was exciting. I remember that happening. But really since that time and then with the couple of months of shutdown that we had from COVID kind of felt a little like I’m just treading water but it pleased with the very slow progress.

So the whole issue with older folks

I think is muscle memory and getting your body to do something repeatedly and naturally. And the freestyle high elbow catch stroke is a very unnatural thing to do with your body. At least it seems that way to me. It seems very awkward until you’ve done it thousands of times and then it becomes less awkward. And maybe if you learned it as a kid like I’m sure you did, it doesn’t seem awkward at all. But it seems very awkward and somewhat difficult for someone in their 50s even with good mobility. But it just eventually just comes about. And you mentioned in your post the other week that it started to like something just clicked and then like you were tracking your times you’re using the form goggles to track your times and just all of a sudden you did this 130, 100 and it just all sort of came together. What was that? Do you know what were you thinking about at the time or what was it that sort of changed for you

in that session? Well, I just listened to a podcast in my ride to the pool, a 15 minute ride. I listened to the first half of your podcast where you were discussing the core, the body’s core and how do you develop that? I forget the name of the guy you were speaking with but it was very, it got me really focused. And I think I just carried that focus into the pool that afternoon. It was a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. So it wasn’t a work day. And I just remember feeling very long and tight in the water. And when I saw my split time on the goggles I got this adrenaline rush and I just started to go nuts.

Maybe a little bit, maybe thrashing a little bit because it got sloppy towards the end. But then the next session that I went, I did it again and then I did some drills. I did it again. I did it four times that session. I had times all less than 136. And that has never happened.

I didn’t feel exhausted. I know I was in a heart zone that was not the max.

I could probably push myself more but I just remember being so excited about that that I thought maybe the goggles weren’t working correctly. And so I took a video recording of it where you can clearly see. I could clearly see myself leave the, in the beginning four times up and back or two times up and back. And then with a lousy touch turn they were almost knocked over the camera. So I think I’ve lost two or three seconds but when you look at that video, it’s a 131 or a 130. And that confirmed that the advertising that these form goggles guys do is it, they really do record accurately your time in motion and your stop time. So once I confirmed to myself that this wasn’t a fluke and then I could consistently do it, it’s very rewarding and I think I used the word thrilling because it is. It’s not really a fast time at all but for me coming from where I was, it’s stunning and it’s all about reduced drag, increased propulsion.

And it’s, I think at one point a year ago you told me to separate my fingers a little more. You saw I was cupping my hands and I thought, well, cupping your hands that must be how you get the most water. And then I, after you said, don’t do that, let them relax a little bit, actually thought about the fluid dynamics of it and the effectiveness of really creating a larger surface to push the water past you. And it makes sense that you don’t want to cup your hands but I never really thought about it. And so that’s just another one of the little things that comes up where you say, you always focus on just one or two things rather than trying to get a whole magnitude of, you need to fix this, you need to fix that. You just have these little takeaways, go do this and come back in a couple of weeks with another video.

Or in my case, I probably, for every video I send you, there’s probably one that doesn’t make the cut because I look at it and I say,

I’m not sending this to him because it’s terrible. It doesn’t show any improvement or I wasn’t concentrating. And so I have quite a collection of failed clips

from the pool. And even then, sometimes it’s hard to get a video at the pool because you want to be courteous to the other people who are there, I tend to wait till there’s hardly anybody in the pool and then ask their permission if it turns out they’re going to look, perhaps be in the background of my camera shot. But I’ve never had an issue with that. So I don’t know what more I can say, it’s just, it’s really amazing.

I guess the other takeaway that I get, and you’ve said it many times, I see you say it to everybody, what you think you are doing and what you are actually doing, oftentimes are very different things and it’s difficult to see that unless you record yourself

and then work to correct it by exaggerating the movement or feeling like you’re overcorrecting that absolutely is a truism. I mean, that’s, I can’t tell you many times where I know I’m doing this, but you look at the video and it doesn’t lie. You’re not, I’m not doing it. My arms are not straight. My pull is not coming back closer to my body.

It’s out. It’s not the YMCA drill. So it’s just, it’s really a way of learning to swim

that would have been impossible 15 years ago without GoPros or waterproof iPhones or whatever it is people are using and then the ability to transmit that to someone on the other side of the world

who can look at it and having seen thousands of these really get to the core of the problem and work slowly to fix it and it really does work. It’s really amazing that it works at all.

So it’s, and I think that’s a really, something that I’ve noticed with the swimmers who make progress like yourself. It’s often the ones that are willing to stick to it long-term and stick to it long enough where they’re willing to fail in a way where it’s like you try and make the changes, you see it on the video and go, okay, that wasn’t it. And then you go back and try again and then you maybe exaggerate those points a little bit more and then you get those happening in the stroke and then we look at the next thing and then look at what to work on. And sometimes some of the old bad habits creep in and that’s normal. You’re not going to just change things permanently forever. Things will creep back in, but with a timeframe of two and a half years some people might look at that and go, that’s a long time. They might think that’s a short time, but to have stuck with it for that long, I’m not surprised with the attention

that you’ve put on your technique and the consistency that you’ve had with your training. I’m not surprised that you’re at where you are now. And as you mentioned in one of the posts, you said, I’m just an amateur swimmer. I’m nothing special with my swimming and it just goes to show that with the right approach and the right mindset I think going in that if you’re willing to stick with it long enough and to be willing to record yourself regularly enough and get that feedback, it is absolutely possible to become a better swimmer. So first of all, congratulations on the massive change and what are your goals now that you’ve come this far? What is it that sort of excites you now about your swimming? Well, I think to keep, try to get my time down a little bit more within reason. I mean, I think I could get my time down into the low 120s, maybe even 120. I know I can do that pace in a 50 yards. I just kind of run out of gas.

I mean, it’s a matter of maybe a little bit of age and a little bit of fitness. I mean, like I said, I think I’m reasonably fit but I’m not crazy about it. I don’t take supplements. I don’t work out every day. I try to let muscle recovery occur. I think it’s important. I don’t wanna strain myself and I typically never have, although I think the day that I did the 131, I could feel my lats the next day. And I remember you saying two years ago, that your power in your stroke comes from your lats. Not, I thought it came from your biceps or, I mean, I didn’t know. And then I thought, I remember writing back to you, I said, what are your lats? Where are they? I mean, I actually look it up on Wikipedia because I’m that lacking in knowledge of muscles. I mean, I can tell you all about physics, chemistry, geography and astronomy and paleontology but I didn’t know where my lats were. I mean, it’s pretty weird but I think I must be using them

because they feel different. They occasionally feel tight and I guess that’s a good thing. I mean, you develop your muscles by more or less tearing them slowly over time. And maybe that’s what’s happening. I’m not gonna obsess over it but that might be one thing that’s changing is I’m using my lats and I’m not just using my arms. It’s a really common response that I get from people when they change their stroke in the right way and sometimes that’s over the course of months or sometimes if we’re running clinics we’ll get people to make some changes there at the clinic in person. And before they, sometimes I’d feel it through the front of their shoulder or up through here and it’s more an uncomfortable sort of feeling but if they sometimes change their posture and they go to this tall and proud posture as opposed to being rounded, if they change where they’re going where their arm is or hand is through their catch and pull

it just puts their arm in a different position to allow them to use their lats and through their back and shoulders more. And that is when you can have much more power for the same or even less effort. And it’s a good indicator that you’re doing the right thing. So it’s really good to see how much you’ve learned

in the last two and a half years because like if I was going to geology for example saying I’d have no idea where to start and I guess it’s the same thing for you going into swimming. So all these little changes like having your fingers a little bit further apart looking in the right position not putting as much attention on the kick. It’s, it might sound simple now but for someone with next to no knowledge come into it it’s that stuff can make a huge difference as I think we’ve seen. So yeah, congratulations and thanks for sharing your journey in the last two and a half years on the podcast. I’m sure that a lot of people will find there’s something to take away from that. So thank you for that and all the best for the next, well next six to 12 months and 120 is certainly with insight now that you’re down to 131 and yeah, I think that’s a good target and be, might have to get you back on when we get down to 120 and see what’s changing there.

We’ll see how soon that happens. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, Chuck. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster and more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.