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 Jan Prins, and this is kind of come full circle because probably about nine years ago, Gary Haring, who’s coached with me for several years, he was an Olympic coach, Olympic swimmer. He actually trained under you, Jan, and I remember he mentioned you several years ago, and I thought I’d be great to to eventually get in touch with you one day. And here we are on on the podcast. You’ve recently written a book called Freestyle Biomechanics, The Science Behind the Strokes, which I’ve got here. And on today’s podcast, we’re going to get into a reasonable amount of detail and I guess technical detail on particularly freestyle and the impact that different changes in your stroke can

make because for the last 20 plus years, this is what you looked really deeply into. And this is something that I am really interested in because we do a lot of underwater filming and analysis, probably not quite to the scientific and technical detail that you’re going to cover here today. But I think there’s going to be a lot for me personally to come out of this, but also for anyone listening just to see the impact these different things have on their on the speed and velocity. So firstly, welcome and thank you very much for joining me here. Thank you.

Much appreciate the opportunity.

And so for those that are listening with you’ve got a I guess a PowerPoint here. So if you have the chance to watch this on YouTube instead or maybe on Spotify with video, you’ll get a lot more out of this podcast because you’re going to be sharing videos and some different things as well. So just a heads up if you are only listening to this. So Jan, if you want to just if you want to take it away here, I’ll ask questions as we go and as you mentioned, we’re going to show how we use the technology, the high speed cameras to look at the subtleties which stroke mechanics and I would like to start and use this in the book as well. Mark Levin was sent by the New York Times to do an article on Michael Phelps and he went to a swimming and he had to prove what was going on. So he wrote this quote, which is a real lesson for all of us because we take it so much for granted being involved with swimming from the get go, but most people they have to be

shown and gone over what swimming detail is all about and his comment of all the Olympic sports compared to swimming and of course, Fathalon open water is perhaps the most resistant to casual analysis, meaning you’re not going to walk in there and know exactly what’s happening right off the bat. So I think that’s a great quote. So we’re going to look at a high speed videography and motion analysis and this is a still picture on what we’re going to look at in a video. Before we do any filming, we have to identify key points in the body and we have to tape it because in the water the markers are washed off. So we have to tape it on and we have a battery pack and born with a belt in the back and you can see this still picture. Now I’ll show you the video. Okay, first before I show you the video, these are what the cameras look like. They are custom made. These are Digi cables very expensive that run from the cameras to the computer

that’s on the deck. So here’s a video of an actual filming. So I’m going to hand scrub and here comes the swimmer and you can see the lights and here’s the camera facing the swimmer. There is a camera on the bottom of the pool you can see and then the camera from the side. You can’t see it this time because he’s passing it. What are we looking at? We’re looking at movement in the longitudinal plane of motion from left to right. And so the graph plots velocity. How fast the hip is moving in the longitudinal plane of motion. Hip velocity, which is the bottom line. We want to see how fast somebody’s coming from A to B. So here is the classic setup that we use. You see the three synchronized cameras. These are all synchronized. The left hand side pictures are the head on and the bottom view, but as soon as the hip velocity, the hip light shows up, you can see this bar. In this particular swimmer, generating much lower velocity

with his right hand. His right hand is considerably slow in terms of generating speed that is left. And so it’s very quickly evident that we can spot out things that normally I can’t. And this is why we’ve pursued this. This is an excellent way to actually look a little bit more in detail. Now, that’s why we just said subtle and not so subtle movements. So I just as a quick example and I read some more examples that we go along, but we looked at the dropped elbow. You can see high elbow and the dropped elbow. And so we asked the swimmer to purposely drop the elbows to right hand and look at the bottom left hand graph. And the top right hand will show the lateral view as the swimmer shows up. So here comes a swimmer from the side and you can see the bar and if you if I freeze this bar right where the elbows dropped, you can see how the lateral speed just plummets. How much which is really the question because all these

numbers don’t mean much if you don’t know how much percent that drop off folks measured at 34%. So if you keep dropping 34% with each stroke cycle, this is no joke. And that’s why we all of us consider the drop level. No matter what stroke we do as one of the most serious mistakes. So I thought I’ll start off showing you what the technology can do. Now we’re going to show you more examples as I said, so let’s first look at something that’s very intriguing. And I started talking about this couple of years ago because it wasn’t really talked about too much. You’ll see from again with the high speed stuff Brandon, which is really good, really easy to identify what we’re looking at. So the question is the first initial question is why are physically the strongest persons not necessarily the fastest swimmers? The $64 question. You work with triad leads all the time. What do you tell somebody who’s pretty muscular,

who’s getting passed up by somebody who’s not as strong or some ladies? This is the question. So I think it’s a good, it’s a great question to ask. So what’s the answer here? First of all, Impulse and I don’t want to get too technical, but it’s very easy to see that applying a force over a time is what Impulse is. So here’s our land based examples. A large force in a brief time. Wrestling, if the person can hold the opponent for a longer time, apply more Impulse, they’re going to win. So how does this apply to swimming? In swimming, this is what we say. It is not necessary to apply maximum force.

What is needed is to apply a force that can maintain peak swimming velocity for an extended period of time. That is the key to apply peak velocities for an extended time. So let’s look at what the graph shows us. Before we look at an elite, let’s look at what an average freestyler, and I’m going to show you a division one freestyler from the University of Hawaii. And this is classic because we all the people we’ve filmed, other than the ones I show you why elite look like this. Most swimmers intuitively or as instructed, accelerate the hands as the stroke reaches its conclusion.

We see a surge in maximum velocity, which most often occurs during the last third of the underwater pool. So here we go. This is typical of what we see. The overall majority of swimmers will wait for the last third and then go whoosh. So that peak is very brief.

One more time. See that? And that’s how we coach before until I started realizing that this is not holding it for such a brief amount of time really isn’t paying off. Now how brief? Look at this. I know this is a still picture. That peak velocity in this particular swimmer maintained for only 14% of the underwater pool. Is it that shocking?

That’s all. So the question is then, here’s another one, show you another one, a little bit better, 25%. So not quite as peeky. See that? A little bit flatter. And so we want to ask. So these are regular swimmers, good swimmers. Can we do better? Certainly. Some swimmers instinctively apply more impulse during the underwater pool. And I’m going to show you and since I’m talking to you, Brenton and all your friends down under, this is Emory Siebel. She came over and had a chance to film this is years ago. But the data is superb. We just didn’t tell them any what to do. Because at that time I have to be frank. We didn’t I didn’t understand this stuff with impulse. So we just said, Emory, why don’t you swim? And we’re filming. Look at this in the heat three months. Oh yeah. So flat out with that. Yeah. She was maintaining maximum swimming velocity for a sustained period. Through this. Wow. And that’s something.

So I thought this is really good for people to understand. Now, I have. And again, I’m using Ozzy’s. We filmed Magnuson right before the Olympics in London Olympics. I didn’t want to put it because I want to have people look at it in the video and in the book. If you look at the book, you’ll see I showed some Magnuson speak velocity, but to go back if you like, he looks very flat. But I’m falling in back because I like people to get the book and read it. What do you think? Pretty impressive. Yeah. So for the say for the average person listening to this listening to this podcast. My takeaway for them is it could be like we’re not trying to at no point do we ever want to muscle the water or have these really big peaks in in power and speed. We want to try and just draw that out. We want to try and just maintain this consistent speed. Going out is a very expressive term. You need to sustain it. And in the book, I also talk

a little bit about acceleration because we have to be very careful about acceleration. If you’re thinking constantly of acceleration, you’re not going to be able to get a good hold on the water. How would you explain it to if you’re coaching someone, let’s say in freestyle, I mean, all the strikes are reasonably similar, but let’s say for freestyle, I mean, terms that I’ve used in the past to coach them is it’s it’s slow to fast or slow to faster. So a lot of people do go too quick to too early. Exactly. You have to change gear gradually because you’re going to lose traction the water and I’m going to talk about that in the next next part, but the water has to push back on our hands. And you have to maintain that and the more elite the swimmer, the more sensitive they are to these changing pressures. That’s the one thing that struck me all the years. And this is why Emily, as I said, we didn’t have to tell her

this. She instinctively did this. And you see when people look at the book and see Magnuson and all great swimmers do this. They sustained the velocity. Now, I have to be a little bit careful about some sprinters. They just go for it. And so you see some peaks, but they’re swimming very fast. But by and large, especially for your group for triathletes, it makes absolutely no sense to just go for broke right away. You need to feel the pressure on the water. That’s I like the way you phrased it earlier. You said that the best swimmers or the elite swimmers are very sensitive to the changes in pressure. That I think is a real. Yeah, a real key and that’s in one way. It’s a one way to describe the feel for the water. I think is that change in pressure and making sure you’re never going too hard or too soft or you’re slowing down too much at the back or speeding up too much is that that constant pressure. Interesting. There’s a little drill that you can

have people use. You stand at shoulder depth in the water, but don’t stand with your with your body against the side of the pool. You must not have the support of the side of the pool. You have to be slightly away from the side of the pool and then you pull, put your hand in front of you and pull very rapidly. Your body won’t much. Then you start your pool and gradually feel the pressure of the water and you feed your body backing up against the wall. Am I descriptive enough? Am I making enough sense to describe that? Yeah, so if you’re standing up, say about shoulder depth with the with the water, hands in front and you’re coming towards the body or you’re going down towards the. You’re doing a regular pool just like you would do a pool that you know works in freestyle. Yeah, but we’re talking about the velocity. If you engage the pool very rapidly and try to accelerate, your body is not going to budge usually to just be standing

motionless pretty much. You do it a little bit, but it’s going to be mostly motionless. Whereas if you engage the water and feel the pressure of the water, when you start to pull, you’re going to lose your balance and go back. Hmm. That’s really interesting. We do us like a drill power pools. We call it, which is like a double arm pool through under the water, like almost like an underwater butterfly stroke. And a lot of this was at the start, they go really quick and really hard at the start and they might move half a meter or a meter. But then when we get them to just build into it and gradually gradually build into it, they go twice as far sometimes further. That’s exactly what we were talking about. You know, I just used one arm because of freestyle, but both hands fine. It’s just increasing the sensitivity. And that’s why I started out by saying not the strongest rumors are not the fastest rumors.

Yeah, that’s great to see that data. For me, visually, that’s really nice to see that explains some of the more ephemeral parts of this stroke. Data to settle the subtleties of stroke mechanics, Brenton.

That’s great. You mentioned we were going what’s in the next part of the presentation here.

Why process forces are the dominant motion in freestyle? And we’re going to talk a little bit about finding new work. And so this was in the book. I use this as a beginning introduction. This is because for years, not anymore. Thank goodness. But you know, it’s funny that you are I still hear people being coached like this, using the sculling elliptical patterns. And this is the way we swim. We started the way we coached. This is sculling back and forth. I said this is an inverted question mark. So that’s how people swam freestyle. Do you agree?

Backstroke. Same story down up down. That’s the way people swim. And then the keyhole pool. You remember that?

Yes, how people were taught to swim going out and in. No more. This is a very good quote from this research group. The strokes designed to produce drag based propulsion showed markedly higher thrust. The lift based propulsion techniques resulting in reduction of drag contribution and total thrust. In other words, pronounced sculling motions reduce the thrust production of the stroke. So when you start drifting all over the place, you don’t create enough thrust. Now, one of the thrust we’re talking about is propulsive drag pushing against the resistance of the water for propulsive drag. They were easy to explain. This is propulsive drag in full action.

And we have to make sure that people understand pushing backwards against the resistance of the water. And Ernie Maglisko, who wrote a very fine book on swimming years ago, he corrected me when I sent him with my manuscript to edit. He said, don’t say pushing backwards. He said, you’re pushing against the resistance of the water. I think that’s a very important thing to think about. The water has to provide resistance.

That’s that’s such a key distinction. I think they’re pushing against the resistance of the water. So we’re going to look at we’re going to follow the thing here. This is my again. This is what I put in and this is Barry Bixler was an aerodynamic researcher, but his kids swam. So he got into hydrodynamic research. And this is what he came up with. He said, regardless of the stroke angle at which the arm is moving, keep the palm of the hand facing directly towards the feet to maximize propulsion.

Isn’t that a great quote? So trying to, yeah, trying to minimize the the turn of the hand basically always keep facing back. Yeah. So the intent of course is to engage the water directed backwards and repeat the process by finding new water. Early positioning of the hand and palm towards the feet, which is really what we talked about as early as a cat. So this is the hundred free in the games. And actually this is from Tokyo and you can see. Let’s look at the hand right there. You see the wrist going down fixing and the same thing here. You’re engaging with the cats right away. The palms are facing down and back right there. And I just want to, when you mentioned finding new water, can you explain that? How would you describe finding new water? Exactly. And Brenton, if you would hold on just a couple of a minute or two, I’ll show you. Cool. Yeah. This is another view of this. And you can see the same thing.

See how these women they engage the water. Now I also need to make sure because I read you emphasize this and sort of Jerry and all the good triathlon coaches. We don’t emphasize in the in the ocean. You don’t emphasize a lot of extension, right? You want a little faster turnover really grabbing the water. Is that correct? Yeah, it depends. It kind of depends. Yeah, I still like to. I still like some is to extend out in front of the shoulder. Sure. And but you don’t pause. You don’t really emphasize this long stroke, right? You make the the rapidity and turn always much higher in the ocean when you’re competing. Yeah, normally increases increases a bit, but it would just depend on the person I’m working with really because the stroke will change a bit. Right, right. So this is this is what we see. And then let me just scrub a little bit further. If you see, yeah, here’s some ladies doing the same thing. And

you can see the second swimmer over. This is very nice footage because you can really see what the hands are doing. Look at that right there. One more view from the side. Very expressive. So you want we want to talk about what this finding new water is all about. I said applied over a long period of time possible stroke cycle. This means increasing impulse, which we just covered. So these are the still pictures from the book bread and I broke it up. Top right or top left sequentially. You can see your hands. Palms are facing back all the way through. So I think this is a very nice way to show what we just talked about. Palms are facing back. So I was a feat. Now what we have to do is make a distinction between palms facing backwards and pushing linearly straight back. We do not want to do that because the water is not going to be resistive if it goes for too long in a straight path. Once a force is applied to the molecules, the molecules of water will

move. Resulting in a loss of resistive drag force. What we did and this again, I use this to mention this is 18th century propulsion. The paddle steamers, they may be paddle steamers in Australia in the years gone by. Yeah, yeah, some of the rivers and stuff. Yeah, exactly. So what the paddle steamer does successfully is engaged the water for a very brief amount of time. These paddles grabbed water and then get out of the way very quickly. They don’t hold and the reason we kind of do the laugh about it is because there was an investor in St. Louis who convinced people to invest in a paddle steamer that had instead of a circulating and ready. He made the vans look like this. Of course, the picture is not. I can’t find the picture. I looked for years. Can you imagine what would happen if he made the steamer look like this instead? Because the water will just be going on. And what happened is all the people, the investors came out apparently to

watch the grand opening and the thing didn’t budge, just stayed in one place. So I think that’s a very good analogy. Now, what is the new water business? Finding new water based on the observation that the molecules only offer resistance. They remain relatively still. Be aware of the pressure of the water on the pump. And somebody sent me this when they heard me talk about it. He says, yeah, it’s like when you grab the water, you don’t want your hand to move too much. Now, that absolutely is not the case in the water. Your hand is going to move. So this is what I did. I put some video trails that is flooding the path and superimposed a grid over the swimmer. And then I want to remind people, Brenton, that this, what I’m going to show you is a 2D view of what’s taking place in 3D. So this is a still picture and I’m going to show you a video after this. You see the grid and each of these are different molecule sets of molecules.

We can assume that. So here is what we said. Assume that within each rectangle of the grid, the molecules of water remain relatively undisturbed. We can now see a swimmer’s hand progressing through different quadrants of the grid successfully engaging new water. So let’s play this. Each of those quadrants is, we would assume as different molecules of water. Is that pretty descriptive? Yeah, that’s a good way to, right. And you know, I’m very happy with that myself on the back for coming up with this grid because the grid really emphasizes the fact that we’re looking for new water.

And it’s not obviously part like the hand will move a little bit side to side, but it’s like it’s finding new water in different depths as well. Exactly. And but you notice the palm, Brenton is painting back. See, we don’t see the palm facing the camera pushing back. So I think that’s pretty descriptive as to what we’re talking about in terms of finding new water. Yeah, one thing I’ve seen with some, let’s say less experienced swimmers is they try and they’re trying to work on their catch and they know I need to get my hand my forearm mostly vertical there. So what they end up doing is they end up just pushing straight backwards and they don’t end up going down with the arm and down with the hand to find that new water. And they’re really ineffective when they just go straight backwards. And so that’s a very important point you made, Brenton. And that is because also with them keeping the elbow bent at 90 degrees

or even less. If you go straight back, you’re not going to be able to do with a elbow held at about 90 degrees, you will go straight back. You need to go down and that’s why and that’s a different part and it’s in the book. So let’s go back to this picture that I just put this still picture in which is showing what we do not want to do. If you stay in a straight line for too long, you’re not going to be holding water. And that’s what you’re talking about. People that you’re working with. And when you’re talking about the 90 degree catch, so you’re saying looking from this side angle, if someone has a 90 degree angle with their arm, they’re much more likely to go straight back, which is going to be less effective. And this is why I’m going to, again, it’s not part of today’s discussion, but I made a big issue of this and we talk about that in the video as well, that we don’t go to good swimmers are not going to go 90 degree. They go

more obtuse angles. We’ll talk about this in a minute, Brenton. So anything else on this we need to talk about. No, that’s good. That’s a great way to to say it and to describe what we, yeah, what someone wants to be aiming for there. One more time. See, the grid shows different portions of the water, different molecules of the water being engaged by the hand.

All right, now I want to show you something that I had to show you this because I can’t put this in the website in the video. I can only show it to you because this is from YouTube, but it really sends a strong message. You will get the message immediately. I’m going to play. We’ll have a good laugh. This guy is riding with his buddies. What’s what’s happening? The only reason he’s whipping all his buddies is because he has minimized frontal resistance, Brenton. He has no frontal, his profile is minimally where his buddies are peddling furiously

and facing the direction of the wind. If there’s wind.

He has got rid of frontal resistance and that’s why he’s cruising past everybody. So it is, I think it’s a wonderful way to emphasize right off the bat. You’ve got to keep your profile. Minimal frontal profile. What do you think? And yeah, I’ve seen that video before. And it’s so good. Yeah. And that’s because all those guys are working away. They’re still peddling and he’s not peddling at all. This guy is doing nothing. Yeah. Good. I’m glad you’ve seen this. And then it’s even more relevant in the water. Right. Like it’s much higher drag forces. Absolutely. You don’t want to be playing at weird angles. So I said the video in the first part of the book breaks down the free side detail. I’m going to make some shows. I’m example brand and what makes this different is the addition. What makes this different in addition to efficient mechanics. I have showed some defects and this is data collected over 35 years. So I just pulled some pictures from the book

and this is their video footage of this. And these are people we filmed for 35 years and real defects. They’re not faking it. So this is like bending the knees on the up the very rock. I don’t say common defect but you need to catch that right away.

Rising to the catch. If you enter too deeply. Most rumors say oh I’m too deep. I got to get back to the surface to start pulling so they look like this. And you can see what they’re starting off with immediately a drop level.

All this rising to the catch. This is just showing how we use the video trails rented and these are the paths of the recovery. I have always a straight up and you can see the straight on recovery is definitely moving faster but you really got to watch the speed at which the hand hits the surface. And again I talk about that in the book because the velocity of the hand is much higher the further from the axis of rotation. The linear velocity.

And go ahead and just just on that like you would typically see that straight arm recovery more in sprinters. Can you talk a little bit to why a sprinter would would use that and the benefits of it. Yeah because the hand is moving faster. Through the air the fastest but the risk is that they’re going to enter with much more impact. But the benefit of it is they I was going fast over the top and they can carry that speed over and in the water and out in front is it. Yes provided again that they got a good catch and not everybody can do that.

And what would you typically would you change what you’re coaching or teaching depending on what the athlete would naturally be suited to how they’d normally come over the water or their events. I would talk to them I would seriously encourage them to do a high elbow. For one thing there’s a major stress on the shoulders Britain the further arms are away from the axis of rotation the more internal talk they develop so high recovery is brutal on the shoulders. Very very stressful and this is the reason and you can use this as an example. I’m sure you have to give something heavy to carry and say OK you stick your arms out and I’m going to give it to you and they’re going to make it much easier by pulling their arms in because the internal talk is reduced tremendously.

The speed is high so if you want high speed that’s fine but I would definitely talk people distance swimmers away from swimming with straight out and that’s why most good distance swimmer do not swim with straight out right.

Yeah yeah and that’s the reason it’s it’s a built-in safeguard.

Yeah I got some then the last the last example I’m going to throw in here is late breathing right you don’t never want to turn your head. Keep your head still turned after the hand passes the shoulder like that’s not going to work. And so I just these four examples I want again it’s a you know what I have in the book and also this this is video also you know video I show them actually video of this. And just with that like that like breathing Jan so

with with that so the way I kind of think of that like part of it I guess is the timing of the stroke when someone’s a little too rushed in front and there’s a point where there’s nothing in front of their head like they’re like this and I say they’re a distance swimmer for me that’s always felt like they’re just not able to get that much power from the stroke because this arms kind of going separately to the like rotation of the body like they’re not able to use the full full body together how would you kind of describe it Well I think late breathing has a lot to do with not exhaling enough so you’re still exhaling even after your hand has come out past the shoulder line and you’re still trying to get rid of the air.

So we’d like people to excel a little bit early so by the time the hand is past the shoulder line Britain they’ve got rid of what they have through the mouth and the nose absolutely and then they’re ready to take the next breath. If you hold your breath for too long we see that this is invariably what happens. Yeah and it’s we see it quite a bit with probably with like maybe like five to ten percent of the swimmers that we see there’s that late breath.

And yeah and obviously just it throws a whole stroke out and it’s when you pointed out to someone it’s really obvious but sometimes they’ve just got no idea that they’re breathing like it’s correct and you know it’s surprising how many people are even at the beginning I mean we have a beginning swimming school. You have to tell people they have to exhale through both their mouth and their nose. You can’t just exhale only through the mouth and the nose more air of course will come out through the nose but you must go some up through the mouth too because there’s not enough time.

So at like high at sort of race pace breathing every two is like so you recommend mouth and nose there yes more of it will come out the excess the majority will come out through the nose but you have to still exhale a little bit through the mouth to make sure they are all the air comes out. Now if you want to hold your breath and just go like we don’t go you don’t have to you don’t have to blow it through your mouth if you’re really going super fast if you get if you can get rid of all air through your nose fine good for you but I find that being swimmers are much more comfortable getting rid of the air through both the mouth and the nose before they turn to take a breath and if you want you know better swimmers maybe more and more air will come out disproportionate amount through the nose but I think it’s a good idea to start swimmers who have problems look like they haven’t breathing is to exhale through both the mouth and the nose

and I believe that and then I just had some just to wet people’s curiosity I said why the 90 degree elbow bend is no longer recommended and if you look at all swimmers now it’s all an obtuse angle this is a 111 degrees and then pulling wide you talk about the s-ball quite pulling wide doesn’t win and I show them I show the high speed video of the drop off and then swimming sideways and this is something that’s very subtle if you watch a swimmer from the water you can see their palms still facing back you see the back of their hand facing the camera Britain but the hand is sliding sideways the hand is sliding laterally even though the hand is facing back and you got to watch for that because it’s very subtle and sometimes it’s because they’re just weak which fight which part of the stroke is this is this well through any part or particularly through the front starting from the beginning to the middle their hands are sliding to the side even though

you said I want your palms to face backwards which is what they’re doing but the hands are scooting sideways.

We would often teach or the way I describe it if we’re looking at someone swimming towards the camera.

Normally say we don’t want the hand to really be going wider than the elbow because at that point they do lose some of the ability to use these stronger muscles to their back and shoulder and and it’s obviously you’re going to be slipping outwards and you may have the palm turned out a little bit with that as well. So it’s and so you say one of them one of the main causes can just be weakness through through that because they can’t hold the water and maintain that pressure and so they instinctively and I’m going to show you a really fun example of a butterfly slipping not going sideways but turning these palms up and I’ll show you in a minute. I think you really get a kick out of this.

And then we also talk about asymmetry. Nobody there’s nobody born and will be born who is perfectly symmetrical cannot but you want to try to reduce that asymmetry because some people have significant differences and we show the high speed stuff on those differences but I know a lot of coaches that try to bang their head against the wall trying to get the swimmer to agree exactly the same and you know the strange thing Monday even in Bristol nobody pulls exactly symmetrical. Yeah, you know so don’t waste your time but as long as you can reduce that and then the last thing I want to do just again I’m touching on all these things that I’ll cover in the book and the video is the business of keeping a stable base and I said due to the necessity of maintaining a stable base for the muscles the practical questions still exist through the swimmers intentionally rotate their hips or do the hips rotate naturally according to the rhythm and swimming with us.

That’s a question and you know it’s a it’s something that we need to think about.

I was looking at that part in the in the book actually and one of the things you mentioned was you feel like swimmers shouldn’t intentionally rotate their hips. It should just be like a natural thing that kind of happens within the stroke. That’s what I feel because there’s no ground reaction force. You can’t even you play golf people are taught to whip their hips right at the right time so they get more bang for the buck. You can only do that if the feet don’t move. We have no ground reaction force in the water. So we have and then you can always ask the question if you watch a sprinter Brenton their hips hardly move and the reason they don’t move as much is because they have to generate so much more force. You know muscles in order to exert force on one end has to be steady on the other end. The proximal end has got to be very stable for the distal end to move. And that is what happened. That’s just natural muscle mechanics.

You can’t change that.

And so for someone who is let’s say you’ve got an intermediate level swimmer or triathlete there and they’re too flat like they’re very they’re too flat for the hips. Yeah. What would be your suggestion to them?

Pay a little more attention to the extension up front because by extending up front you will find the torso following. That’s what I feel.

Yeah.

And yeah. So you get them to to feel like and how would you describe it to them like would you say like from with your fingers with your hand would I want you to extend forwards more and reach out more or are you talking about like would you say like through your shoulders you want to sort of initiate it from. I’m just curious in terms like the language you’d use because I find that interesting. Think about your hand. Your extremity is what finally gets your arm to where it should be. So focus on your hand because your shoulders your trunk your shoulders will follow your hand. Hand will govern how much rotating the body will rotate. So it’s easier for a swimmer to think of where their hand is going and make sure of course that the elbow goes to full extension because I’m sure you do drills and stuff where they go halfway and stop and they don’t get the same bang for the buck because they’re so count is not high or it’s too high.

So you need to go all the way until you feel like your side of your hand maybe is touching the side of your ear but you have to be careful of not forcing it to touch the side of your ear. That’s a little bit too still to me. Yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, you cannot you know we don’t we don’t submit our head and ears.

The the that’s stability of the the hips and the and the core there. So the way the way I’ve explained it in the past of people is imagine your hips are on hydraulics as opposed to like being a like a swing in a playground. It’s kind of got these like metal chains coming down where it’s like it’s going to move all around. We want it controlled. We want that that stability even though it’s going to rotate for distance swimmers. We don’t want to lose a goosey. We don’t want it wobbling around. Great. And you and you know why do you have very steady hips is because they have to generate more force and I tell people when I’m lecturing in biomechanics, you pull a rubber band and let it go on both sides at the same time. It’ll just flop down won’t do anything. If you want the rubber band to pull, you let go one end and they hold the other end and then it will exert force.

That’s a good way. That’s a good way of thinking about it with yes the extension of the arms hold on to it with the hips and yeah. That’s right because that’s muscle mechanics. Brendan simple muscle mechanics. The distal end, which is the further end can only exert force if the proximal. The end closer to the center stays stable. It has to be stability. The proximal end has to be stable and this is why the larger muscles in our body for our shoulders our pecs, our lats. Those are the large muscles they have to hold our shoulder girders steady so we can exert force with our hands.

That’s a big one. That’s set up with the technically the slowest one is they could have a really nice what looks like a really nice catch and pull through here, but if it’s not if that is not steady, then this is kind of moving on its own and it lacks that connection. So even if it looks like a great position, it’s not just not effective. Absolutely well said well said. How would you for someone who where that’s the case?

How how would you approach that with them to be able to get better connection, better stability through here? Well, that’s you know, I would I would wear paddles to a certain extent and make sure they feel like they’re holding the water and see whether you can see any more activity with their hips. Holding handbells, which would also emphasize holding the water and I don’t have anything really that comes to my mind except making sure that they feel long and tall in the stroke.

Yeah.

That’s I mean, that’s kind of like that. That’s the million dollar question and not something that would be fixed like like that in an instant. So that’s just curious as to you know how you approach it. I am absolutely against tightening the shoulders, pushing the chest down, tightening the pelvis.

All that tension just detracts from the ability to exert propulsive force, you know, pushing the chest down and things with so with the tightening the core and that sort of thing. How do you describe the I guess like posture and any sort of like

don’t have to extend your spine. Don’t stick your chest forward. You don’t want your hips to be below. Just lie as comfortably as you can. You can make people. I would do it. Well, this might be a good dream. Make people ask their spine and start swimming. They’re going to feel weird when they’re starting to pull. Why do they stick their chest out? Hmm.

Do you think like lengthening through their is a good approach? Like think you’ve just been long through the break and you can’t let in your stroke and still stuck stick your chest out.

Can’t make you stretch out and stretch your arm out.

And then now I remember what I see. I haven’t called for a while, but this is one of the things I used to stretch. When you extend your arm and you stuck. All you’re doing is adding the length of your arm. Your arm, including from the shoulder with the elbow is stretched out. Now you go and add the length of your shoulder to that length and you will see how much longer you can go because you added the width of the shoulder to the length of the arm.

Am I making sense? Yeah. So if you’re very square, yeah, if you’re very square to the water, you don’t add the width of the shoulder on the side it belongs.

But then you have to be careful that there’s not too much because all this, you know, rolling the body and stuff and I like. So it’s yeah, like you. I talked about rotation. We want to get. Oh yeah. It’s a happy medium. Yeah, I am happy with that. Yeah, Brenton, it’s just that selling a whole program based on body roll was a absolute, you know, he was pulling people the wool over people’s eyes big time because they say, okay, count your strokes and now roll your body and see how much less strokes you do. Yes, you’re doing less strokes, but you were swimming a hundred percent slow speed.

Yeah, you know. Yeah, that’s it.

So yeah, that like that rotation. It’s I think the guy like I work with a lot of newer swimmers and intermediate swimmers finding the right amount of rotation takes some time for them. But I think I’ve seen swimmers just either be too flat or they just they roll way too far thinking that the more they can reach out on their side and the more they can like if they can get to 90 degrees the better, but they lose that control and that stability. And for me, I said at the width of your shoulder on the side of arms belongs to the arm as it stretches out. And now you’re going as far as you can go.

That’s it’s a good way to describe it because you’re not going to you’re not going to overdo it if you just add exactly. And so that’s the exact is the extent to which you should be extending.

That’s good. I like that. Good. Well, I appreciate you being on the on the podcast. It’s that’s I mean, I’ve been looking at video for a long time analyzing strokes and I’m still learning still learning things here and I’ve picked up a lot of different ways to explain things and different ways to pass like show things as well for people here. So this has been really helpful for me personally, but I think for people who are listening to this podcast they’ll like that. A lot of people listen to every episode. So they’ve got a pretty good hand on on the stroke, but there’s been a lot of new stuff here as well. So I appreciate you sharing a small snippet of your knowledge on here. There’s there’s a lot of having me Brenton and as I said, I’m learning marketing because you have become you have paid the price to put it all the time and I admire you how far you’ve gotten but I’m I’m a I’m a Grammy when it comes to the marketing business.

Well, the an expert in the been a practitioner in this in this stuff. So I think it’s happy to get the get the word out here with the book. So yeah, it’s been a pleasure having you on Jan. Thank you, Brenton. We talk soon.