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 Craig Bryan and Craig, it’s your birthday. So first of all, happy birthday. And I’ve got you on the podcast to talk about the improvement that you’ve made in the last 12 months with your swimming, because I did a follow up filming with you. So you attended a clinic about 12 months ago, Tame did a follow up. And I did the comparison. And I was like, Jesus, this is like this is a huge improvement. And I was curious just to know what your speed improvement was and what that result was after making such an improvement with what looked a lot better. And you said you’d improved about 18 seconds per 100 for a one and a half K swim.

Yeah, for the for 2K, for 2K. Yeah, so it was about Yeah, about 18 seconds per 100 pace. Yes, that’s awesome. So to get into it, when you sort of started 12 months ago, when you did a did a clinic with us, what were you swimming, what were you training for? And tell me a bit about your swimming then.

So I hadn’t swam a bit as a kid. Started when I was about six weeks. And then, and I hated it really parents maybe do it up to I was about 13. And as soon as I had the chance, I stopped doing it. And then pretty much didn’t swim for about 20 years. And then

yeah, a couple years ago, I got merged into a different section at work. And one of the guys there swam. And yeah, they did this, this Christmas Christmas swim challenge. I thought I’ll give it a go. So I started swimming again. And yeah, he smoked me. Yeah, he was a couple of body lengths ahead by the end of the first 50. And yeah, so I was like, oh, maybe that’s a bit of motivation to start training. And yeah, so I was actually, you know, without the swim coach yelling at me, it’s actually quite enjoyable. So I kept it up for a bit. Then a couple months after that is when I came to the first, my first clinic with swimming.

Yeah, I got a couple of tips from you guys kept my swimming up. So three times a week. Two kilometers a session usually two and a half. Did the five week five day catch challenge. Had a couple months off for the lockdown. Then had their had a Christmas race again, got lost again. But I was only about by sort of just under a body length. So improved a bit. And then yeah, that’s, that’s kind of where we up to now. I did the start of the eight week freestyle challenge. And came into my yearly review kind of video with you guys. And yeah, that’s pretty much the story of my swimming. Yeah, it’s it looked, it looked so much better. And I’ll for those that are listening, probably next week, I’ll be able to put a comparison up from your first video to your to your follow up. And I’ll put that on YouTube as a as an analysis just to show people that that difference. And so you you’re around I think 159 pace for your 2k, you’re down to around

141 the last time that you that you did it, which is a huge improvement. And then what about your 50s and 100, 100 times? How’d they improve? Yeah, 50s, probably down from about 39 or 40 down to 35. So about five seconds there. And the 100, probably around 129 down to 121. But actually just since that recording, I did a 119 last week in a in a 25 meter pool. So yeah, keep and keep them coming down slowly. Yeah, that’s good. And I think as well, what looking at your videos. So one of the main things that I think you changed was the original video, you’re going out quite wide with the hand sort of a lot about sweeping the beginning, then coming back in on both arms. And then you managed to make that a bit more direct. And we talk about tracing the outside line of the body. So it’s like a long s instead of a big s shape. And so that improved a lot. And that’s probably a good contributor to it. But the catch as

well, had come along really nicely. And so when you first came to a clinic, did you have much of an idea of what you should be doing? Or maybe what you were doing when you were swimming? Or was it just like, not really a teenager? Like, so yeah, I’d swam as a kid a bit. But I feel like there’s a lot of things that have changed since then. Like, for instance, when the entry on train tracks, when I was a kid, it wasn’t on train tracks. It was like, you were sort of getting into the inline with your head kind of thing. And I’d, yeah, as a kid, I’d never been taught about a catch or

so coming into the clinic, the only sort of things I knew about were just from a couple of YouTube videos, probably yours. Okay, there’s a couple of things that I’ve heard about, but that was about it. And what about how your swimming feels now compared to what it felt like about 12 months ago? What’s the difference there? Yeah, definitely noticeably different in the feel, especially recently started playing around with that sort of pay effects and trying out sort of different kicks, like a two-beat and four-beat kick. And it feels a lot smoother, a lot more gliding through the water. I can really notice my posture sort of almost like floating through the water as opposed to dragging through the water. Yeah, definitely notice at pace that it’s a lot smoother. And what about what you’re thinking about now? So when you first, before you came to a clinic, were you thinking about much technique at all? And what about what’s

it like now? I don’t know if I was thinking about much technique before, that’s probably, yeah, just trying to swim as high as I could. Now things that I’m working on, so from the most recent video that I sent you, there was three main things that I’ve sort of been thinking of. That was keeping my kick a bit tighter, the catch a bit smoother, I guess, in that life-old shape and having a proper exit, I guess, going with all this is on my exit. And I’m still kind of playing around with a bit of the kick and serape. So they’re the things that I’m thinking about at the moment. Yeah, nice. And I reckon as well, once you’re comfortable with those couple of changes, if then it’s a good time to start to look into increasing the stroke rate a little bit, especially for the 50s and 100s, maybe a little bit for the 1k or 2k as well, but definitely for those 50s and 100s, like just getting comfortable, letting it go a little bit, to be able to

get the stroke rate up and work the kick pretty hard for a 50 and 100, because looking at your stroke, you’ve got much a lot more than a 119 in you and a lot more than a 35 in you as well. I reckon just looking at your swim there. And so part of that is finding that balance between good form, but also just going for it and getting the rating up a bit there. How do you feel in terms of, let’s say, a 119 you did the other day? Do you feel like you’ve got room to bring up the stroke rate? I do, yeah, but I guess always in the back of my head is trying to keep that really good form, really good technique, so I think that slows me down a bit in terms of the stroke rate. So, yeah, I’ve actually ordered one of the, I can’t remember all the times that you chucked in the back of your cap. The tempo trainer, yeah. The tempo trainer, yeah, so it’ll be interesting to see how that sort of helps me bring up the stroke rate and what that does.

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 customise 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

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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 used them and I use them for a 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. Yeah that’d be interesting. So you could do I mean in the eight week course in that yeah there’s a set there to sort of gradually increase it. So like if you’re all out 50 for example though it’d be good to do a couple where like you just let it let it rip where you might set it like a hundred which is really fast and you’ll probably have no hold at all if you just be spinning the wheels and see like just see what your time is you’ll be exhausted after it but then go from like maybe a hundred

maybe down to 90 and then like 85, 80, 75 and just yeah just because that hundred will make it make that 80 stroke rate feel so slow that it’s good to have that contrast so yeah I’d be curious to see what your times do when when you do use that. I think at the moment I’m probably around 70 on my my sprints so yeah definitely a lot slower than 100 so that’ll feel different. Yeah it’d be good to um because I mean you probably don’t want to go to 100 to actually use that but yeah I think something like an 80 or at least could be could be good and when when you use it as well there’s that setting to have it beep say like a hundred times a minute if you set it to beep 50 times a minute instead and just match it with your like your left arm yeah so so you’re not trying to you’ve got the beep beep beep in your head it’s just like a beep but you match it with your left stroke only so it doesn’t send you crazy yeah can help as well

quick tip and uh and going forwards what do you have you got any goals in terms of target times or people you want to beat or anything like that like what what are you looking to do over the next couple of months with you Simee? Yeah so I definitely like to beat the guy at work so I’ve got a few months to train for that at Christmas

but yeah I guess if I can get 100 under I mean a 15 I’d be pretty happy just off the walk on a thing and maybe a 2k under 30 minutes would be pretty happy

yeah hopefully ideally as an ocean swim for the 2k under 30 minutes but some I guess that also depends on conditions yeah yeah oh that’s uh yeah I’ll be looking forward to see how you go over the next well say next next 10 11 months to to go towards it because I think it’s certainly possible and I’ve seen yeah a lot of Simees that we’ve worked with have that improvement and 18 seconds in a year is is really good and but I don’t think you’re capped at at your 140 ones for that at all so that’d be yeah that’d be exciting and with your training at the moment so you said you do about two two and a half k per session are you training on your own are you training with friends or or with the squad how do you normally work at uh usually train them oh yeah definitely always train on my own the pool near me doesn’t have a um like an adult squad um which is like I’d like to join the squad but training my own also suits me um

definitely helps when like I’ve got the five five day catch and eight week freestyle program so um yeah I’m quite quite good at um being consistent and um and strict with those I guess so it also helps yeah just being able to set my own time and um like I can go at lunch or before work after work that kind of thing yeah I think it’s yeah it’s really good for when you swim on your own for me personally I find I can concentrate on my stroke better and uh I can usually be you the water’s a bit smoother because you’re not sitting behind someone five seconds so you’ve got that advantage and sometimes the disadvantages you may not push as hard so in terms of fitness sometimes that can suffer a little bit but the technical side of it I think you can usually do better when you are training on your on your own and you’re not you’re not sort of rushing your stroke at all because you’re trying to keep up with people in your lane

and now it’s easy to fall into that habit with the squad so um yeah if you aren’t a squad you can still improve and if you train on your own you can yeah still improve as well so just use what you’ve got and um yeah it doesn’t matter sort of either either way I think and um and what what’s one of the main sort of drivers for you with with why you swim is it like do you feel good afterwards does it help you with work is it the the challenge of getting better what are some of those motivations I think probably the challenge of getting better yeah um yeah I guess I never had that as a kid I was just swimming because I had to swim now I kind of enjoy the process of of learning and improving um yeah I guess that’s sort of a few things in my life like that just that the whole process of improving is um probably what keeps me coming back that’s the main thing and swimming it’s quite obvious you can see both the pace come

down but then just visually like the straight looks better kind of thing as well yeah yeah it’s uh it’s good like that it’s you know whether or not you’re getting better just based on the times and then to see that visually as well is um is great so yeah I think in you filming in January so then maybe like April May June somewhere along there would be a good time to to see where you’re at and again and um yeah be interested to see that continued improvement so um yeah in terms of finishing up here is there anything um that you think the people listening should should know anything that you’ve learned along the way with your own swimming that you think could be helpful for for others? um sort of put on the spot here yeah I guess probably that I mean just I was talking to my wife I was like I’m gonna go on this podcast and she’s like what are you gonna talk about all you did was just um listen to their tips and swim three times a week

consistently yeah I guess that’s all I did so I don’t know maybe that’s the tip just uh just be consistent and um yeah enjoy it I guess um if you can find enjoyment and stay consistent you probably see results yeah I love it it’s it’s it’s funny isn’t like to put simply it’s like it’s those two things really it’s like be consistent with it and you’re doing three times a week which I think is the sort of the the minimum you need to do to see good improvement so you sort of tick that box and then focus on your stroke and you know apply those tips and it can be kept pretty simple in the end really like that’s uh that’s all it takes so that’s um I like that it’s really good well um Craig I appreciate you being on the on the podcast and sharing your improvement over the last 12 months and looking forward to seeing how you progress in the next 12 months yeah that’s good awesome thank you you’re having me yeah thanks for

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