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 Aiden, who is over in New Zealand. So Aiden, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. We’ve been exchanging emails for a little while and you sent a recent one saying that you made a pretty good, you’d hit a PB for your 100 freestyle after going through the eight weeks of the eight week, faster freestyle course. And I think you’re probably, you know, in the upper end of, in terms of speed with compared to most of the people I tend to work with, which we’ll talk about in a second, but it was a really good PB that you hit. And I thought there’s probably a lot that people could take away from what you’ve done to make such a good improvement. So what’s, let’s just start off with what, what was the goal that you had in mind? And then what did you hit with Yeah, so I didn’t, I didn’t prior to doing the eight weeks, I done the five day catch challenge. I think it was that,

that you’ve got there and that was good. And you know, so I understood some of the basics of what you were doing there. I didn’t have a time in mind. I’m a recreational swimmer, for the most part. But so prior to coming into the eight week challenge I’d done, I think my best was one minute 18, 400 meters. And in one of the last sessions, I think it was session one week eight of the eight week challenge. I hit a 112. But that was after doing, you know, 30, 50 meter sprints. So I think if I’d done it before that, you know, I would have had a bit more, bit more stamina and been able to keep going. So I think in my own mind, I wanted to get under one minute 15. And now I’m sort of like, I know I could do under one minute 10. If I didn’t do it after a whole bunch of other tiring sets. So yeah, I was I was absolutely stoked. It was a quite big improvement, you know. And what was it over those eight? Was there anything over

those eight weeks that stood out to you that you maybe didn’t know before you introduced into your stroke?

It was really, you know, every sort of piece of the puzzle was sort of building on the last piece. So I can’t really pinpoint one thing. They were obvious parts where, you know, I thought the power diamond was was really good. And obviously, we spent a bit of time on that. I found, you know, stroke rate, really upping my stroke rate. And the final week there was big, they had a big impact as well. I think I think everything I just sort of built on one another. So starting with some of the basics and sort of building on that to gradually get faster. And it wasn’t like I was constantly sort of watching my speed each week. In fact, I really didn’t do that at all. I just noticed that gradually I was starting to get a better rhythm going. And then, you know, right at the end, sort of working on the rhythm of the kick. I mean, I think that was sort of the icing on the cake. And with the power diamond, was that before you just

hadn’t considered that part of the strike much? I was I was already trying to use my arm like a paddle. However, I don’t know if I was going sort of deep enough and no one had ever taught me sort of the right sort of shape there. So I may have been doing it a bit too far outside or something. So I didn’t I just didn’t have the technical knowledge prior, basically. And if you’re a new listener, if you want to be a podcast that the power diamond is it’s part of the freestyle stroke that when the hands passing underneath the shoulder, where we basically want the arm to create this half triangle, if you’re looking from from in front of someone. So the elbows pointing to the side of me down, it makes like a half triangle that’s on the side. And if you had both arms there, it would look like a diamond shape. That’s the power diamond refer to and most people to be too straight with their arm as they’re going through that circle, a lot of people their hand is out

really wide. And so get that diamond shape. It’s better in terms of you can shoulders better than the stronger muscles to the back and shoulders. And also that direction of force is more behind you, instead of sometimes off to the side or coming underneath the body. So that’s why we want to get that power diamond. And then the the stroke rate was that something you had thought about much as you’d swam or was it was a fairly new. It wasn’t something that I thought about obviously when I want to swim faster, I move my arms faster. But it wasn’t something that I even really paid that much attention to in terms of counting it and monitoring monitoring it. So that’s still something that I’m coming sort of coming to grips with and playing around with. I’m looking forward to doing you had a test there where you could find out your optimum stroke rate by doing different series of 100 meters at different stroke rates. So that’s actually what I’m

going to do next time I’m in the pool. But I have been watching that over the past week. And when I did, I think when I did my my last personal best, I was probably in the high 70s in terms of stroke rate. But when I’m cruising, I found that I’m probably sort of maybe like high 50s. Yeah, that’d be about right. Like it’s going to change with the different speed that you’re going. And it’s an important one to to consider. And I don’t talk a lot about it. Like most of the stuff I talk about is it’s it’s technical things. But then once we’ve got that technique in place, stroke rate is the other it’s the other half of the stroke. It’s it’s an important one to look at. And I had some me last week, I think it was and they said I’m around two minutes 45 or two minutes 50 per 100. And one of the things I mentioned to them without seeing their stroke is I want to just check what your stroke rate is because all the

time if someone’s around that speed, their stroke rate is probably in the mid to high 30s or really low 40s, which is which is super slow. And like it doesn’t matter how good it’s from you are going to be quite limited with the speed you can achieve. If you if it’s too low, obviously, we don’t want to start spinning the wheels and going too quickly either. But yeah, it’s fine that sweet spot between the between the two. And it’s good to like how do you measure your how do you measure your stroke rate? Have you got a Garmin? So I swear with a Garmin watch for quite a few years now. I treated myself to the form goggles recently. Yeah. So some of those now I can see it sort of in real time, but prior to that I’ve used the Garmin watch and that was always pretty good. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I think the form goggles I I don’t look at it. I’ve got I don’t often see it at the time but I do like to look back if I’ve done a set and it’s it’s

really interesting because before that, I must say what it was, I was never really aware of it at the time. But I look back at a set, it was like 2, 400s, one was at like 70%. One was it. No, one was at 80. One was at 90%. I look back at the stroke rate and it was originally 61 for the first one and then 60 stroke rate for the second one. And and you can see that the distance per stroke shortened. I can’t say it was like 1.7 to 1.58 or something. But the overall time for that 90% one was quicker because that stroke rate was a little bit quicker. And so it’s just interesting to see the combination of the two and how that translates to to speed. And it’s it’s really good just for building that awareness around what an impact the stroke rate can can have provided that you keep some sort of distance per stroke. How do you feel in that in that fast 100? Did you feel like you had a pretty good hold of the water still? I felt like I was really

moving. I mean, I was the fastest side sort of swam. So I felt like my arms were moving pretty fast. I was, you know, in the high 70s for my stroke rate, which is a lot higher than what I would normally do if I’m cruising. But yeah, I felt good. I felt good. I felt like I was catching the water really well. So that’s why I think it was a lot of these ingredients that you’d been talking about, sort of building and coming together to sort of work in a cohesive manner. Whereas in the past, maybe, you know, I wouldn’t have been able to tie things together together quite so cohesively. It hasn’t just been, you know, the one off speed though, because I feel like that’s almost doesn’t always also sort of paint the whole picture. It’s more about now, if I’m swimming and I’m just cruising, I’ll always be doing less than a minute 30. Right? You know, that would be like a one minute 30 per 100 would be like a warm up swim almost now. Whereas

in the past, it probably would have, you know, one minute 30 would have been a, you know, maybe decent swim. So I think, I think basically, there’s a lot of efficiencies that have come into my swimming now.

A quick note from our sponsor. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Form Swim Goggles. With these goggles, you don’t have to look at the pace clock anymore, or be one of those swimmers in the pool always grabbing for their watch. With Form Smart Swim Goggles, you can see all of your key metrics while you’re swimming, distance, pace, stroke rate, they’ve got it all. And the swim data is displayed on the goggle lens, and you can customize the display to see the metrics that you want to. And I was worried that it was going to be distracting, but you can literally see through the display, the metrics are always there, but you have to choose to focus on them. It’s really impressive. And it makes hitting intervals or any kind of specific training, much more manageable and achievable. And the goggles track it all, it’s automated. So from the time you start your session, to the end of the swim, you don’t have to press any buttons in between. It

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will sync with the form app. And then you can review all of the details of your swim. And you can see what other swimmers are up to in the form swim community as well. I’m a big fan of these goggles. I was really impressed when I use them. And I use them for the vast majority of the sessions that I’m currently doing. To find out more about the form swim goggles, go to formswim.com. And you can use our coupon code effortless at checkout and save $15 off your order. Back to the podcast. Is there a bit of a checklist that you end up going through when you are swimming, a bit of a technique checklist that you go through in your mind? I don’t really go through it. I don’t think so. I think I’m always just consciously thinking about all of the lessons really. So I don’t, you know, that’s something I could add in and just work through it. You know, just thinking right back to the start as we’re talking here, one of the things that I used to do prior to

coming through the program was, I was used to breathe through my mouth and out through my mouth. So one of the first things I changed was breathing out through my nose. And I felt like that probably helped control my heart rate and keep it calmer in the water as well. So lots of little things. Yeah. And it’s funny, isn’t it? There’s just so much to think about. And stuff like that can be pretty quickly, I think. Like the, you know, the breathing, I’d say, like a week or two into it, most people can change that as a habit. So that’s become natural. And so then you can just keep adding one thing to the top of another. And over time you get, you get quicker. And I like your approach too. Like I said, you weren’t, you weren’t concerned about when the speed would come. You just follow the program. And then eventually this, this speed came and I think over the course of eight weeks. Like it’s a good timeframe to be able to make some things pretty

close to permanent. And it’s enough time to see a, see a difference. And with the five day catch challenge, we’ve had so many people make improvements in the five days. But to make it stick and to make it permanent, it’s going to take longer than those five days. So that’s why I think the eight week good timeframe there. I think it was actually quite good for me that I did the five days first. That was sort of how I found out about it all. So then when I came to do the eight days, it gave me like an in depth. So the five days was giving me like a 10,000 foot viewpoint of, you know, these are some of the key points of the stroke. But when I got into the week by week, eight week, I could really dive deeper. And I really enjoyed that. And I had time to practice them and sort of build, build those, those habits in. So I think that was quite good. And are you training with a squad or you, you go? No, I’ve just been training on my

own for the past year. Prior to that, when I lived in Argentina, I was training with, with a team, mainly triplets. But here, I’ve just been training twice a week on my own. And I think that’s been another reason why it’s been good just to have a plan served up to me. And I can just go and be a good student and follow the drills. Yeah, that’s great. I was chatting to someone on the phone this week and he was basically saying, look, I’ve got it’s I haven’t got any anything on for like another six months in terms of racing. And so like, I just want something to, I don’t want to have to think because I’ve got a lot of other stuff on, I just want to be able to go to the pool and follow like a warm up and work out. And then I, yeah, and then that’s it, you know, and that’s what I that’s why I put those main sets in there and the suggested warm up and stuff. So I can basically like watch the video and then to think too much about what you

going to do because it’s all there. And I mean, on the same, I like to be told what to do sometimes. It’s like just leave the the thought out of it. The only thing you need to think of is technical things. Yeah. And I was going through it at two sessions a week. So it actually took me longer than eight weeks. So, you know, I would just two sessions one week, two sessions the next. And, you know,

each week had three sessions. So it just maybe didn’t take me 11 or 12 weeks, but that was that was fine. Yeah, cool. That’s here. And so from here, you feel like tend is a is a possibility now. And where do you feel like you could find that? I know it’s a possibility because when I did my one 12, I just ran out of gas and using my goggles and my watch, it tells me the time on each length. So each progressive length length was literally one second slower. So my second length was one second slower. My third length was another second slower. My fourth length was, I think, another second slower. And it was just because I’ve done 30 sets of 50 right of that and tried to maintain a decent tempo for those. So it’s already at the end of a long workout. So I’m pretty confident that if I hadn’t done all of that prior, that I would be able to do one 10. And for me, I mean,

that’s just seemed sounds crazy. It still sounds crazy.

I think the crazy thing for me is it’s not that I’ve just started swimming. I have been swimming for, I don’t know, 10 or 12 years or something. But I’ve just been through your program and seen quite a dramatic gain. It’s like I had sort of plateaued prior to doing your training and then having gone through your training, I sort of blasted through it. Now, maybe I’m approaching a new plateau and just it’s just, you know, quite satisfying to hit some new numbers. Yeah, definitely. That’s why I think swimming is so good because you’ve got that. It’s not like maybe gymnastics or like surfing or something where it’s more

subjective. Swimming is like, this is the time you’re doing or these are the times that you’re holding and you know whether or not you’re getting, getting quicker. So that’s why I think it’s and it’s good to be able to see the the data to back up feeling better in the water, which is, which is really nice. Yeah, I also like that, you know, for me, it was about, you know, I’m not going to break your world record or anything, but I’m still being able to say, oh, well, you know, I’ve improved 10 percent. And I think that anyone swimming in the pool can say the same thing. It doesn’t matter what, you know, what speed you’re going, but you can say, well, you know, you I think that efficiencies were really amazing. Like you said, I think it was when we were talking about the Serrapi effect, you know, that’s something that might make you sort of one percent or two percent faster kind of a thing. And, you know, that that’s that’s great because

that’s a second for me, you know, over or a couple of, you know, it could be a couple of seconds even over 100 meters. So those little efficiencies building on one another and swimming faster with less energy being used. It feels good. And what do you what do you enjoy most about swimming? What do you really sort of get a kick out of? What what keeps you coming back? I think for me, it’s almost like a I get into a very sort of most of meditative state. It’s keeps me sane. It’s a good break from office work and family life and so forth. And I don’t get injured. I used to do quite a bit of running and started getting sore knees. And at the moment, I can’t actually run very much with my knees, but I can swim and I don’t get injured. Anytime I go on, you know, holiday or vacation, if I’m around water, I’ll be straight out into the water.

So I just think it’s really good. It’s just I think that I think I just like everything about it, to be honest. Yeah, I’m on the same page with you there. And if you if someone’s listening and they feel like they are injured because of swimming, it’s worthwhile

filming yourself because the amount of people who have under clinics and they’ve had a niggle in their shoulder, it’s so often it’s caused by technique. There certainly can be other things like for me personally, I once had a sore shoulder for a couple of weeks because of how I was sitting at my computer on my laptop like it was just the way my shoulder was I had. I think it was like my my lower trap or rhomboid, I think it was because of how I was at the computer. But there was a lot of times where it’s niggles. It’s worth getting that filmed and having someone just to look it out. But it’s so that’s the thing about swimming, isn’t it’s just so great to be able to to be able to just yeah, you can do it for forever. And I’ve had people contact me in their like 70s some in their I think 80s as well saying, look, I’m I’m going through the catch challenge or going through the eight week course and will this be relevant to me? And it’s like, how good

that? Like when you’re 70 and 80, you can still be swimming.

Yeah, no, it’s it’s it’s amazing. And I see, you know, older people in the pool all the time. Well, you know, I hope I’m I hope I’m still able to swim like like you and I’m that age and stuff. But

yeah, I’ve never been injured from swimming. I’ve been injured from lots of other things. But swimming seems to be the one thing that hasn’t injured me. So such would Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks so much for being on the on the podcast. How you made such a good improvement over the last couple of months. And yeah, wish you all the best. I can’t wait to hear once you get under that one 10. And yeah, I’ll let you know for sure. It’s been fantastic. And I love the love the program. And I’m looking forward to working through more of the programs in there and getting my stroke analyzed and stuff as well. I know you do that. So I think that would be hugely beneficial for me at the stage just to, you know, maybe improve a little bit more. So awesome. Yeah, all that improvement without having any video and done is is great. So there’s certainly some other things that will be there once we do some videos. So yeah, I’m looking forward

to it. Thanks, Abe. Thanks. 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.