Like I said, there’s crossfitters out there that are doing, you know, multiple, you know, deadlifts with hundreds of kilos and hundreds of chin-ups and all of that sort of stuff. But, and it’s really hard for them

to, I guess, get their ego out of the way to rehab themselves and go back to those subtle basics. And then, but when they do, the performance benefits are great. But usually they do it when they’ve already been in a lot of pain for a long time. 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 back to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. This is part three with Sam Fenton. So in the last two episodes, we looked at the physical literacy method of developing swimmers. And part two, we looked at feeding ankles, how you can improve your underwater kick and your kick overall through better ankle and foot strength and range of motion. And in this episode, we are looking at deep core. So Sam, welcome back to the podcast. And what do we mean by deep core? What are we talking about here?

Yeah, thanks, Brent. Yeah, look, we, there’s a, I guess there’s so much movement towards Pilates, as you may know now. So there’s a lot of, especially with your physiotherapist now, nearly every physio’s got a clinical therapist, Pilates therapist that works with them. Lots of physios are doing their clinical Pilates qualifications. You’re seeing it all over the place. And I’ve been in the Pilates game since about 2004, 2005, and seen a lot of different ways of teaching Pilates and those sort of things. And what I find is a lot of even physios that have done their clinical Pilates and those sort of things are not teaching the exercises, but they’re not teaching how to do them properly.

So when we say deep core, there’s a group of muscles that work together in particular around stabilizing the lumbar spine. And this is where the argument gets a little bit funny, as to whether it’s everything’s, things that local muscles, where we call global muscles, your big movers, and local muscles, the muscles that are closer into the joints and stabilize them, whether they’re assisting in creating movement. If you think of, for swimmers, rotator cuffs is a good way to think about that. They’re local muscles. So are they there to create movement, or are they there just to stabilize and suck the bone into the joint? So what’s their role? So there’s a sort of a trio, I guess, that we don’t talk about a lot, which is the pelvic floor, which is the bottom. So the pelvic floor acts like a little trampoline that holds up your organs, but it also works in, connectively with everything around your pelvis too. So when you think of creating stability around your pelvis,

and you think it’s not just a bone, it moves at the pubic, a pubic symphysis at the front, and then you’ve got your sacroiliac joints and two cartilage joints at the back as well. And then you’ve got like your sacrum in the middle. So your pelvis moves, and it can be stable or unstable. And pregnant women know that this gets really unstable when you get pregnant, and they can have continuing troubles after birth as well around that area. So pelvic floor is important to provide stability there. So stability is important for the same, around the pelvis for the same reason that a chassis is important to use a car analogy. I don’t know if this is appropriate for readers or watchers or listeners, but integrity is really, really important to be able to transfer power through your body. So pelvic floor is really, really important. And for the other reason, that holds up your organs as well. And it works below your diaphragm.

So your diaphragm is pushing up and down with your breathing and your healthy pelvic floor will be working against those forces as well. And to create what we call intra-abdominal pressure. And it’s really important to have that intra-abdominal pressure so that we can transfer force up and down the body.

And the way I like to think about this in terms of transferring a wave going through your body is transferring a wave through a string, through a tin can phone. So I don’t know if you’ve ever made one of those before, Brent, but you can get two tin cans and a piece of string between them. And you just tie a little knot and a little hole in the bottom of the tin can and you pull it tight. And then you can talk through them like talking through a phone. And it’s the vibration that goes from your voice gets through. The string gets through to the other side. Soon as that string goes slack, the message doesn’t go through. And that’s very much what happens through your body. So if you’re trying to… Yeah, good way to explain it. Yeah, so if you’re trying to get your upper body to coordinate with your lower body, you have waves of energy that go through your body. And if you’re slack in the middle and the local muscles aren’t doing their job in the middle

and you don’t have integrity in the middle, then that message doesn’t get through and that wave doesn’t transfer through the body properly. So kicking suffers, upper body suffers, head-eye coordination suffers, everything sort of drops off. But the thing that what we see most in the Western population is back pain. So we see back pain, back pain in running, back pain in swimming and just poor movement. And you don’t improve that through lots of crunches. You don’t improve it through doing V-sits and you don’t improve it through doing planks. And apologies to anyone out there that’s offended right now. But there’s a level of quality of using things, the trio of muscles that I was talking about before is your pelvic floor, your multifidus and your transverse abdominis. So your transverse abdominis is like a kidney belt that runs around so when you pull it together, that’s when you pull your belly button in, that’s your transverse abdominis.

So you’ve got your pelvic floor, you’ve got your transverse abdominis and then you’ve got your multifidus which works actively to stabilize the lumbar spine and using those together. And again, you’re using these in a skillful way that you build up through awareness and very basic hip tilting exercises, activating your pelvic floor and tilting and then starting to do it under a bit of pressure and then you build that up over time. So often I’ve done a lot of rehab with crossfitters who look a million bucks, who’ve got a six pack, got muscles bulging out of everywhere, no body fat, look fantastic, but just destroying their joints and back and all of that sort of stuff and can’t swim fast and can’t crack beyond sort of basic levels of performance whether it’s in triathlons or whatever it might be. And as concerned as they are about injuring themselves, they continue to do it because the heavy lifting and the crossfit and the big ab workouts

and all of that sort of stuff makes you feel great and it makes your body look great and everybody notices that you look awesome. So it’s a pretty hard sell to get people to do the really subtle internal work that takes a lot of mindful attention and mindfulness to be able to develop that type of core strength. Great, I want to get into some of those exercises soon and doesn’t need to be a whole lot. And we talked about some exercises for improving your range of motion with the feet and that kind of thing. And I find like what I’ve recommended a lot over the last few years to a lot of the guys that I coach is just I’ve got this five minute TheraBand routine that I post inside our video membership and it’s a lot of your basic shoulder exercises with the TheraBand doing that before training and a little bit of that is can work wonders. Like you don’t need to be doing an hour of that once a week or anything, just five minutes of it

is going to start to strengthen those local muscles around the scapula and that sort of thing and just improve your range of motion as well. So I imagine it’s probably going to be very much the same for some of these core exercises as well. And I like how you explained the like I’ve talked about is you want to swim from the inside out as in you’ve got to have that stability through the core to then deliver that power through the extremities and to connect it all up. So if it’s like a wet noodle in the middle, nothing’s going to connect. And we see that very often when we’re doing video analysis. And one of the things that I learned about a little couple of years ago was the Serapa effect which is for overhead movements where you’re essentially connecting up it’s like this band from the hips.

These four muscles where it starts from the hips and comes up through the shoulder girdle and connecting that up like when you’re throwing a ball and it’s that wave effect and it’s similar in swimming and it’s I find it’s quite hard to kind of recognize and see and explain in swimming but it’s that exact same thing. It’s that coordination and connection from the hips and all the way through out the front. Yeah, look it’s really, really hard to see but when it’s done well, it looks great.

It’s almost like it’s when it’s done well you don’t even notice it like it’s just everything moves really, really nicely. Yeah, so Caleb Dressel just put out a couple of what he called it COVID something. Quarantine it was, I’ve reckoned that to a lot of people. Yeah, quarantines and so if you look at him and his mate that he pulled off the PlayStation to come out and do the size video with him. So, you know, and you can just see the quality of their core. So they’re doing actually very what same people and this is the I guess this is the big issue in teaching people this stuff is what they’re doing actually looks super simple and everyone’s like, oh yeah, I can do that. Like I can put my legs in the air and make a plank facing the sky and I can do a plank on my side and I can do a plank facing the front, lift my legs. But he’s got an Olympic level of core control.

You know, and I’ve done core workshops. I’ve done lots of core workshops over the years but I can grab any athlete that’s at that level and I can do any of the movements with them and they’ve never done them the way I teach them. But I know because they’re at the Olympic level. I’ve done it with Michael Clem and Ash Delaney. You just grab them and just get them to demonstrate and any of those guys can do that stuff absolutely beautifully. So if anyone watches those quarantine videos with Caleb Dressel, watch below his belly button. So you’ll see his belly button and then just below that when he’s doing all of those movements you’ll see a perfectly stable, super, super, super powerful transverse abdominates when he’s moving through that and so no movement through the lumbar spine when he’s doing his stability work and which gives him the ability to freely move with under a higher amount of pressure his legs however he wants to move them.

So, you know, on his side facing down facing up everything just works absolutely amazing and that’s because of what’s going on internally. So the answer is not just do these exercises that Olympic swimmers are doing or just do the exercises that the best athletes in the world are doing. You need to learn the fundamentals that they’ve developed over time and think about these guys are professional athletes that have the best high-performance coaches and strength and conditioning coaches working with them day in and day out just watching those things all the time like a hawk and correcting them all the time and making sure that those things are working properly and, you know, clinical parties, therapists and those sort of things. So, yeah, it’s, you know, when it looks good and it’s not, and again, it’s not the sexy thing like I just do these exercises and you’ll get instant results. It’s actually, it’s a lot of time and practice

in learning basics and going back to the fundamentals. That’s really interesting. It makes me think about when I’m running clinics where we’ve got six swimmers at most and we’re going through, we go through six drills. We keep it really simple. But I’m very particular about how they do those drills and sometimes people, I’ll stop them and say, all right, I want you to just bring it. I’m out to the side a little bit here. I want you to just sort of just a little bit here like very particular and they’ll kind of look at me like, yeah, okay, like they do it. And I think a lot of the times they’re like, okay, does this really sort of matter? But as it like, I’m there, I’ve seen thousands of swimmers do these drills and you, what I notice is that people, what people do when they normally swim will translate. More times are not into the drill. So they’ll often do these drills really well if they can swim well. And let’s say they’re not doing the drill as well.

For example, if we’re doing like a side-kicking drill and someone has a tendency to cross over when they swim, they will cross over in that side-kick drill because it’s just what they’re used to and it’s how their body moves. And then we start to get them to change it and over time it starts to change the way that they swim. But it’s really those fundamentals of some of these drills and being very picky about the way that they do them, that over time will help them then do it in the full swim strike without them really needing to think too much about it. Yeah, that’s right. And without thinking, that’s the key. So, and if anyone asks, why am I doing this? Why do I have to do these fundamentals? And you have to ask, like I think we’re talking about Steph Curry and the late Kobe Bryant and why do they do the fundamentals all the time? And that’s the reason why because when you’re doing a skilled movement, you don’t wanna be thinking about parts of the movement.

You want those movements, all of that stuff to be on automatic pilot and anything you don’t use drops off. So, that’s why you have to always do it and it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at it for, you have to keep doing those fundamentals of your warm-ups, activating those muscles because if you don’t, they drop off and then so does your stroke or so does your kick or so does your awareness or so does your feel for the water. So, those things all disappear if you’re not using them. When I’ve done filming with high level swimmers and triathletes, because I’ve recorded them and put them in our membership so people can sort of see examples of really good swimmers. And when I do that, I’ll always ask them, yeah, what are some drills that you do in squad or when you’re training? Like what is it that you like to do? They’re pretty much all the same, like they’re pretty basic. They’ll do like, you’re doing two drills

or three drills. And particularly when I first started coaching, I was out there, what are some secret drills you can do and like, yeah, there’s gotta be some secrets out there. But it’s like, not at all. Like it’s very much the same stuff that people have done for a very long time. And like, well, we’ve sort of made up some drills to help teach some of the things that we wanna teach at clinics because particularly for people who haven’t been taught at a young age or they’ve only started swimming in the last year or two and they’re adults, then sometimes some of the concepts that these other swimmers are doing are a little bit beyond where I think some of the beginners are. So we’ve just sort of made up drills that still work on the fundamentals, but it’s just an easier way to grasp some of the concepts. So yeah, there’s no real secrets out there. It’s just applying the stuff that’s out there in the right way and being diligent about it.

Yeah, look, I think, but I think one of the big fallacies that’s put out there is around core strength. And that’s where I guess, yeah, even the stuff that you see in Caleb Dressel’s quarantine and those other things,

you kind of get the idea that doing these V-sits and planks and these types of things are going to make you better. For some people, they’re going to make you worse. So if you’re overly strong through your hip flexors, rectus abdominis, which makes you, which is a six-pack muscle, which its job is to make you hunch. And hunching is not a great way to swim, you know what I mean? So to teach your core to be long, to work in with your neck, to work in with your shoulders, to be powerful through the pelvic floor, through the multivitus and transverse, holding you together so that you can perform those really skilled movements through those big driving, you know, glute muscles and core muscles and, you know, and then out to your extremities.

It’s, yeah, there’s a lot of subtle stuff under there that’s really hard to teach. And so a lot of people just don’t teach it. It’s hard to teach. You’ve got to coach it. You’ve got to watch for it. Like I said, if you’re watching those calip dresser ones, watch below the belly button, watch how it doesn’t pop. And then, and then maybe watch yourself do it in a mirror and watch yourself when you load up, when you load up in a VC or something like that, watch what happens below your belly button. And if that pops and starts to, you know, and it doesn’t hold together and you start to feel pressure through your lower back, you’ve absolutely lost it. So, so apart from the performance benefits of learning core control and how to use your core properly, it’s the health benefits of enjoying movement and not having back pain, which is a huge thing now. Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of what are some of the most basic exercises

that people can do if they’re just starting out this kind of thing? Yeah, so just a basic, and again, I’ll just put the core level, you can just put the core level video in your notes for this podcast, but just laying on your back. Basic part is leg lift, but learning how to hold through, I don’t know if I can… There. So just being able to learn how to hold through belly, so belly poking out, being able to hold through here, but not crunching when you load your core up. So being able to lift through the top of your core, be strong through the bottom of your core, being able to lift up through your pelvic floor and being able to do that comfortably. And then from there, being able to move your hips. So being able to move your hips comfortably without doing stuff with the upper body as well when you’re trying to move your hips. So just being able to lay on the floor with your feet planted on the ground, knees at 90 degrees,

just being able to contract your pelvic floor and pull your hips towards you

without pushing on your feet, which is what a lot of beginners will do. When a lot of people do planks or bracing or anything like that, a lot of people will tend to crunch at the core rather than stay long at the core and be able to draw up through their pelvic floor and transverse and stabilise the lumbar spine. So just that basic learning and once you’ve learnt your hip manipulation, how to manipulate your hips and tilt your hips, that’s the skill. That’s it. I mean, it’s pretty basic. But then you do that facing down on the side and you’d be familiar with the cat dogs or the bird dog exercise where you’re on all fours and you’re reaching out with one leg and you’re pushing the other leg out. So the key thing with that is, so like you’re starting from, like with your leg at 90 degrees, is that if I can show my shirt here, as you’re kicking back there, is that you’re not, that’s crunching your lower back. That’s what you see most people do.

If you see your lower back there. So as long as you can hold your back in position and then forcefully and very powerfully move through there, which is a lot of glute strength through there,

then you’re gonna be pretty safe. And like you said, you develop that transfer if you do it immediately before your activities or your swimming activities, they tend to work a lot better. Yeah, this was a while ago, but I was coaching same time as Vic Santa was coaching a couple of years back and I saw their elite squad had Mack Horton in there and a couple of other Olympians and Australian swimmers in there. They were doing that bird dog exercise, same thing. And you look at that and go, okay, that’s what I need to do. But there’s so much nuance to it in keeping the hips still and all that sort of stuff. And that’s really the art of getting it right. So some of that stuff. And what do you do while you’re doing that? So yeah, so yeah, so are you holding those muscles together? Like I said, so that trio that we talked about before, which is the pelvic floor, your transverse abdominis and your multifidus, are they holding you together?

And you can see, because it looks really nice. Like I said, if you watch those kind of dressel videos, it looks really good. It looks great. And you just know when you see that Olympic level of strength, it looks amazing. And sometimes it’s like, it’s poetry emotion, but what’s behind that poetry emotion? Well, that’s what’s behind it. It’s being able to use those muscles really, really well. And then when you’re kicking that leg out, how are you using your glutes when you’re doing that? And is your leg popping to the side? Or is there other dysfunctional movement? Are your toes starting to turn outwards or inwards? There’s all of those little nuances of alignment and control that, like I said, needs good coaching. You need to be coached to it. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And yeah, that’s brilliant. And you look at Caleb Dressel in his underwater work, like he’s just, it’s amazing that he’s, so obviously, it’s obvious that he’s so much better

than everyone else in his underwater work when he’s against every other swimmer in the world. Like it’s just incredible to see that level of performance. So he’s really the gold standard for that kind of thing, is that core strength, because you can just notice it when he swims. It’s just amazing how strong he is and I guess that connection, how it flows through and he just makes it look so easy. So yeah. And for everyone that goes out and watches that video and tries to do those exercises straight away, just be aware, he’s doing those things at what I would call a level four. So we’d have like three levels that we’d work on before moving into that really high level, straight full body, you know, kicking one leg up at a time and those sort of things. So he does those things at a very high level, which for him, it’s not a high level for him. It’s just some basic course which on work for him. And you’re talking about, you’d have three levels before

that you don’t talk a little bit about your, well, about your business and what you guys do because we haven’t really talked about that yet, but I think that would be useful for people on the podcast. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so it’s control high performance, controlhighperformance.com is our website. So look, we focus on athlete development, but we do, you know, we do video coaching and we’ve been doing a lot of Zoom work this year. And we’ve been coaching everyone over Zoom and doing it that way. So which has been great. It’s certainly added to our skill set in coaching people in a completely different way. But yeah, look, we have a different approach, very different approach, I think, particularly like I was saying around the core work and those sort of things around, you know, developing the fundamentals. And like I said, it’s not a great, it’s not a great sales pitch. When we talk, yeah, I’m not doing a sales pitch here.

When we talk about, you know, these things, you’ve got to do the fundamentals, you’ve got to do the basics and it takes time. But it really does take good coaching. So if you want to improve all of the things that we’re talking about here, you can’t really just grab that off a YouTube video, especially a very high level athlete. There’s very, the works at a really high level

of performance and then try and replicate those moves. You might look like you’re doing the same positions, but internally you’re going to be doing something quite differently. So having a trained eye that understands and can observe how that, what level you’re actually at. And like I said, there’s crossfitters out there that are doing multiple deadlifts with hundreds of kilos and hundreds of chin-ups and all of that sort of stuff. But, and it’s really hard for them to, I guess, get their ego out of the way to rehab themselves and go back to those subtle basics. And then, but when they do, the performance benefits are great. But usually they do it when they’ve already been in a lot of pain for a long time. So pain or injury or something like that. But that’s how a lot of people get into Pilates as well, is that they find Pilates through an injury. And then they would never would have been able to slow down enough to do that sort of stuff

because it seems like there’s very little payoff to Pilates, which ironically has the biggest payoff out of anything you do athletically. So those things that are subtle and boring and those sort of things and internal and you have to be mindful and all of those sort of things, they’re actually the things that have the biggest payoff for your long-term health and your long-term performance as well. That old adage, it’s very hard to sell a prevention, but it’s very easy to sell a cure. That’s right. And up, but I think with how you’re pitching it is like, this is gonna take time, right? I think that way you find the right people to work with because if you’re saying I can fix you by next week and like it’s just, I think you attract the wrong kind of person to work with. And so over the last few years, I’ve been very mindful of the way that I frame how long it’s going to take to improve and the type of results to expect

because, and I’ve found that’s helped a lot with the type of people that I get coming to clinics and camps, like they are willing to invest the time. And they’re willing to go through that period of discomfort where it’s not gonna feel good and they’ll get frustrated because it’s not maybe happening that quickly, but they know that it’s gonna take some time. So I’ve found it to be a much better type of person to work with. And as a coach and someone who’s as detailed as you, I imagine you’d find it the same thing as you much prefer to work with those people who you know are gonna be with you long-term because they’re invested in it. Yeah, that’s right. And look, I’m very lucky. I work full-time as a lecturer and a researcher. So I don’t have to work with people that I don’t wanna work with basically. So yeah, I only work with people that I want to work with. And yeah, I guess it’s lucky to be able to do that and not to have to try and do the quick sell

or anything like that.

And yeah, the business is really just an extension of doing what I love doing. And enrolling other people in that. So I’ve got Trent as my equal partner in the business as well. And he’s certainly coming along in leaps and bounds and he’s doing his master’s degree now and learning really fast. So it’s certainly coming together. Yeah, that’s awesome. We’ll put the links in the show notes but control high performance. And Sam, thanks so much for this three part episode. This has been fantastic. I’ve learned a lot. And yes, particularly about the feet, the ankles, we’re talking about that but also just some of those basic core control movements because for me, I work so much on technique with people and it’s obvious to me when they’re not connected starting from the core. And look at it, it’s hard to just sit down with someone and in 10 minutes try to distill all of the stuff that’s going on in their stroke and put it in a way that they can hopefully take away

something and improve without getting stuck into the nitty gritty in the detail of some of the core control, developing your core and that kind of thing. But to me, it kind of gives me a bit more information that I can then hopefully package up in a way that people can implement that stuff and just over time improve their swimming. So thank you Sam very much. That was awesome. Oh, thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Just, yeah, great to catch up with you Brent. Thank you very much. Yeah, likewise. Thanks Matt, we’ll catch you soon. Awesome, thanks mate. 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.