that system that you’re doing as you as you start to turn the hip and drop it down the other side. Like you mentioned, it just primes all the lats and the psorias and tear and all the muscles that are used to actually do that catch and pull. And it just it just makes it much more effective and powerful as opposed to just sort of keeping that sort of still and then just putting the arm down, which is only sort of the end of the chain of the movement. 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. This is episode number 134. I’ve got a guest from a previous episode, episode number 123, Carl Rita from South Africa. So Carl, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Brent. Thanks for having me back again. It’s my pleasure. And you I did a video recently on the Serapa effect, which is a way to increase the the power through part of your stroke, using some some primary muscles through the trunk. And I sent an email out about it. And you replied about some exercises and ways that you’ve used to develop the the ability to use that Serapa effect with clients. So that’s primarily what I want to talk about today. And your background is obviously in functional movement and exercise physiology. So you’re the you’re the main man when it comes to this kind of stuff. So I’d love to get your your take and your experience on developing this Serapa effect in swimmers and how people can use some dry land exercises to do it. So we might

start off with, you know, what’s what’s your experience with with the with this kind of movement in in athletes, whether they’ve been swimming or other sports?

Well, you know, it’s as you said, it’s a functional, it’s actually a highly functional movement. And what we found in the past, and just for the training and the whole sort of philosophy is, you know, it was generating power from one part of the body. So like if you’re doing arm wrestling, you would just use your arm. If you’re going to do golf, you just sort of swing the arm as hard as you can. And we’re now we get into that position where we’re realizing that it’s so it’s so connected. It’s a kinetic chain. And so we’ve really been on this thing of when you use the whole body, if you can imagine, like, I hate to bring this always to the forefront, but like if you watch often men punch, you’ll see that they wind up their whole body. And if you watch women often punch, you’ll see, obviously, they’ve been trained to punch, but it’s just a natural thing. They sort of just use their arm, they don’t generate that sort of power, unless

they’ve been taught to do that. I don’t know why that is, but it’s not a discrimination, but you’ll see that difference very clearly. I’ve got a five year old boy and you what you say, throw the ball and you see what he winds up the whole body, where the little girls just sort of throw it along, you know, just using their arm. And so that that’s kind of where we get moving towards us is why is getting that whole body to twist and generate power as opposed to just getting a single joint to generate power. And I guess we should probably talk a little bit more about what the Serapa effect is before we go into it in too much detail. But I might give my take first in in swimming, and then maybe your take overall from all the different sports that you do. So basically, one of the the ways that you can generate more more power through the stroke is when you’re basically you’re in freestyle, you’re reaching forward and extending with one

arm out in front, you want your opposite hip to be lifted up. So you’re basically lengthening the muscles through your kind of through your hips, through your your midsection through your core, all the way up to kind of up to the ribs. And as they’re they’re lengthening, you’ll start that the catch and the kick and you’ll start to rotate to the other side. And it’s this contraction and shortening of the muscles that give this sort of snap back effect to get this nice sort of drive forwards to the other to the other side. And it’s really that sort of that flow and that nice rhythm that you see really good swimmers have. And it’s it’s how you can basically just take a lot of the a lot of the effort out of just really trying to muscle your way through the stroke with your arms. And you can really use your your your trunk and your your whole body to generate speed and propulsion. So that’s kind of my take on it from a freestyle or a

swimming perspective. What about you? How’s how was my interpretation of it? No, it’s a great good interpretation. I think you see it with the with the turning of the hips, you you bring in you sort of start the flow of movement you started you get that you power up you almost prime the core system. And it’s important for the distance understand you’ve got different systems in the body. And so that that that system that you’re doing as you as you start to turn the hip and drop it down the other side, like you mentioned, it just primes all the lats and the serratus interior and all the muscles that are used to actually do that catch and pull. And it just it just makes it much more effective and powerful, as opposed to just sort of keeping that sort of still and then just putting the arm down, which is only sort of the end of the chain of the movement. So you having to really generate as much power as you can through your

shoulders, as opposed to all the power you’ve lost by priming that system. Yeah, and the way I love the way I normally explain this at at clinics is when let’s say you’ve got a baseball and you’re asked to throw it as far as you possibly can do it without rotating your hips and your shoulders or you can use is your arm. So there’s no rotation at all through the body. See how far you get it. And then once you’re allowed to open up through your your hips and your upper body, you’re going to get that ball so much further like you think of someone pitching a baseball. And it’s that it’s that effect. That’s the Serapa effect in inaction. Exactly. And then we have then the golf swing as well. But as you said baseball or pretty much ball sports throwing its its use. And we’ll touch on exercises that the guys can do and you know, do in the gym as well. Because it’s it’s something that’s often see the incorrect placements of the position on the

land that doesn’t that actually sort of goes counterbalances the Serapa effect. Yeah, right. So let’s let’s get into to some of that. So what where should we start maybe some of the exercises that people can do to start to develop this in their in their movements? Yeah, I mean, it’s so many, but one of them is even just boxing. Like if you had a few were to have punching gloves on and you were punching a bag, you know, you wouldn’t just punch just with your arms you would be using a whole body. If you can picture that. And then the other thing is, you know, things like lat pull backs, not lat pull downs in the gym where you’re sitting down, but we actually have the your the cable in front of you. And you’re pulling up, I’ll do some videos for you like last time and share that with the guys, but just basically where you are standing in front of the of the of the machine and then pulling the arm back if you can imagine, so like pulling

your elbow back behind you. But I’ll go into some of the technique stuff now because very important is a lot of the a lot of the positions that people stand to stand with their feet in line with one another. So they stand square to the machine. And so you’ve got no balance on the sideways plane. But if someone was to come and push you forwards or backwards, you wouldn’t have that stability. So you’re not in a good position. And then what happens is you stand in what they call a split leg position where you have your left leg in front of your right leg. And very often many of the of the of the guys who are doing this in the gym, their legs are to split. So now you have front and back support, but now you don’t have lateral support. And one of the one of the major players or muscles that are working in the body there are your obliques, your side rotational muscles and your abdominals. And so if there’s any sort of instability

imbalance, then that seems to be a major handbrake for you to actually generate power. So that correcting the position is important. And the correct position is just is to stand slightly splits and about just about shoulder width apart. And I’ll document that on the video and just show people the correct position because that plays a major part of getting the abs and the whole system to work properly.

Yeah, like I like that. And we one of the things that I doing clinics with people. So one of the sort of final drills we do, it’s almost like a sort of single arm freestyle drill with a slight variation to it. But when they when they’re doing this drill, one of the things we kind of have to adjust for most people is we’ve got to get them to actually reach forwards first. So reaching forwards with their arm before they start pulling, open up through that opposite hip. So rotating the hips. And that’s getting that that lengthening of the muscles and actually kind of getting on the side a bit. Because if they don’t get that reach forward with the hand and opening and lifting up through the opposite hip, they’re not going to get that Serapa effect. And and once they do make that change, you see their stroke just or their distance per stroke increase massively because of it. And and then I think, you know, doing the stuff

on land is a really good way to transfer is a really good way to kind of get this stuff happening in the water a lot better. So is that kind of the first thing that you’d start with is the is the position of people? No, well, I think getting them to really understand because, you know, we’re talking about athletes here, but the majority of a lot of the guys, this is may just not be, you know, the athletes is actually just doing where you you teach them a thing where you sort of swing in your arms, even just walking, where you not just swing in the arms, you’ve got the whole body moving and then you go into the sort of sort of these punches where you sort of horizontal punches out in front of you. So left arm back, right arm punching forward and then teaching them to bring the hips as well to get to get to move the whole body like we’re talking about the hips. The same with doing a shoulder press like when you when you take a shoulder press

exercise, you take a light weight and as they’re punching up into the air, that they actually the whole hip moves to the left as a right arm goes up as if you’re doing a reach in swimming, your left hip should be turning to the left hand side as well should be opening up. So it’s quite a good exercise to also to do with the swimmers to get them used to this idea of I’m not just reaching my arm out, the whole body is moving out. And then obviously if you were going to do the pull down that would to create this sort of similar sort of effect for swimming, you’d have a you stand under a cable like a lap pull down machine and get them to pull down but not just pull down with the arm but pull down and twist the hips at the same time. Yeah, nice.

And so would you be using these more to train the the full movement? So getting all these muscles to work together, especially in the beginning, obviously, but is it more about getting the muscles work together rather than trying to strengthen that that movement? Or is it a combination of both? It’s a bit of a combination. But I think to start off with, you’ve got to build a coordination, you’ve got to get the guys feeling what what does it actually feel like? And I think you’re an allergy of throwing the ball is also great. You know, you can actually feel like, you know, you don’t need to go non strength and hectic muscles to throw the ball, you can actually see the effect straight away by turning the body. So just getting them to feel like, well, if I put on a 10k weights and I use my arm and then I use my body, I can feel it feels much lighter and more efficient. And you don’t want the movement and that’s what we’re training it, you

don’t want the movement to be sort of disconnected, which we see a lot in golfers that they try and flip their hips now, and then they lose they lose their connection with the arm and then all like you’ll have your swimmer sort of directing their thoughts towards their hips and they forget to pull, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it’s I’ll find it’s yeah, it can take a little while to develop that, especially if that if they haven’t currently got that in their stroke, that coordination, it’s going to be pretty awkward for two or three weeks at least. And but they’ll probably find over the course of a couple of weeks, they start to get it more and more and they’d notice when they they get it, they feel like, oh, man, that was that was good. I could feel that sort of flow coming into the stroke. And and what I find with the with freestyle that that can help with people to kind of progression in a way that they can can go through

is so first of all, you want to make sure that you’re reaching out enough, you’re rotating your your torso and your hips correctly. So

generally, it’s going to be about 4045 degrees through your shoulders, rotation side to side. Yes. And the hips will be about sort of 3035 roughly that’s a bit less than the shoulders. Now, if they’re in that position, then then they’ve got a good chance of having that serapa effect come into play. But what can help them in freestyle is to really make use of it. You want to get your catch. So the sort of downwards tipping of their hand or the fingertips, get that to sync up with the downwards kick of your leg on the same side. And that’s going to help initiate that rotation to the to the other side. So if you can get the correct rotation, you can get the catch and the downwards kick to sync up, then then you it’s going to make everything a whole lot easier. So I find there sort of two two things that you need to have in place to get the effect of it. Otherwise, you’re kind of it’s going to be hard to do. Yeah, no. And I think,

like you said, if you if you try and sometimes teaching it like step by step can be can be confusing, because we tend to think a lot of people are so over analytical that they sort of their mind gets stuck on. You know, if you tell someone to throw the ball, and then you say, well, before you throw gently rotate your hips to 30 degrees, now rotate it’s like, you know, if you just say just throw the ball, and they go, oh, OK, you want me to do this and they go, yes. And then they get the movement. So I mean, that’s where you’re coaching. You can see, you know, straight away like this is actually confusing the person. It’s funny because it’s such a natural movement. It’s just that we’ve been so programmed by the fitness industry to isolate movements. And I think we’ve got that’s what we’re trying to get back to functionality again.

Yeah, yeah. And that’s it kind of goes along with

well, just overthinking things in general. But as soon as you as soon as you’re thinking too hard about a movement, you’re going to lose the timing of it. So while I think it’s some of these movements, you might want to do slowly, like with some of our sort of cat’s drills and so on, like you want to do them slowly so you know that you’re in the right position and you can make sure that you’re there. But then when it comes to actually bringing that into your normal stroke, you want to back off some of that the thinking, the thinking side of your brain and go a bit more for feel, and especially for this Serapa effect, like you will feel when it’s when it’s happening. And if you can just kind of try and replicate that feel as often as you can, as opposed to thinking really hard at trying to do it, you’re going to be so much better off going for that feeling side of things. Well, I mean, if you surf or you do any sports that

require those coordination, you’ll find when you get into that zone, not in the zone, like that feeling you’re not you’re not trying hard. It’s just for surfing, you’re letting the wave drive you, you know, if it’s a, you know, it’s golf, it feels like an effortless shot. You’re not you’re not forcing it. And I always tell my clients when you watch professionals, it looks effortless. And that’s because it is effortless. They’re not they’re not expending a lot of energy unless it’s weight building or like they’re having to do some sort of like rugby physical task. But I also want to touch Brent if we can go there is is some of the roadblocks or not roadblocks handbrake to the Serapa effect. I’m not sure if your if your listens would be interested in that. Yeah, that’d be great. Let’s get into it. So you’re you mentioned the overthinking, you know, we know that the right side of the brain is the is the analytical side. Sorry, the

left side of the brain is analytical side. So what happens is that when people are trying too hard to try to improve a technique, it sort of sends sort of primes the right hand side nervous system. And so they’re actually they actually avoid left side. So your whole left side is compromised. So you find that they’re pulling too hard on the right side and the left side’s not getting so you may even find in swimming that they can turn their head easy to the right but not to the left. And that also may be a postural thing or a just not a coordination thing. But you’ll find that they tend to get tight on the right hand side and that affects the whole left hand side. So that’s quite interesting thing because you want both sides to be working pretty efficient. And you’ll find we talked about this before as well, you’ve got asymmetries in the body so that can be postural. It can just be many things that they daily works there. Maybe they got one leg longer

than the other. There’s a lot of things going on there. But you want that it’s a right pay effect to be, you know, maybe 5545 you don’t want to have like 70% on the right side and 30% on the left hand side, especially if you want to really improve your technique and get be competitive. So so looking at that, so there’s there’s issues sort of functionally and with mobility with a lot of people that will restrict their ability to sort of put this in the in the place and put it in sort of evenly on both sides. Is that what you’re saying? That’s what I’m saying. Yes, you’ll find some people say I’m just so much so much easier to do on my right hand side and so much harder to do on my left hand side, or I feel so like I don’t feel like I can coordinate or get the right muscles working. And and so that’s kind of part of what I do with with my guys is saying, OK, well, let’s just find out where those handbrakes are because you even though

your technique may be right if the muscles are not firing, you’re not going to feel that effect. So back pains, another one tight hamstrings are the things that really can lock up and stop that Serapa effect happening. Because remember, your hamstrings play a big role in hip knee and hip rotation. So, you know, it’s just trying to piece them together, the puzzle and find out

why they’re not getting that movement. Hip flexes, I know you’re aware of those. Those also really can lock out the Serapa effect because that’s kind of where they start. So we need to look at how can we release those hip flexes and and also rotation is such a big part of the Serapa. Like you said, just rotate your body. So any sort of rotational so the hip rotation and what I find is your upper back is where your rotation generally takes place in the lower in the body, in the back. If it’s tied through that middle thoracic spine, you really find that Serapa effects greatly diminished. Oh, completely. And there’s two things I want to sort of touch on there. The first one is that thoracic, thoracic mobility. Like I’ve sort of found this when I’ve travelled a lot or been driving a lot and also just carrying carrying the kids around like my my thoracic are about 50 percent down on what they would normally be if I’m feeling good

and flexible. And and it just I can’t recover as easy. I can’t rotate as easily in in the stroke. So I think that’s that’s absolutely key, especially for for swing. And I know a lot of a lot of physios who have worked with the with the Australian swim team and top level swimmers. And it is it is one of the primary things that they look at is that thoracic mobility. And I mean, most of those guys are fine, but

especially among the people who are just swimming recreationally, it’s it’s a big one. And and that hip flexor mobility as well. So with with the stroke and when we look at people kicking, a lot of the times they can’t lift their leg up enough in the the up kick to where their the thigh always stays below the the hip line. So basically, they’re creating drag on their on their thighs because they can’t lift their leg up high enough. You kind of starting from the glutes and then using the hand as a bit as well, because they’re so tight through there. So I think if you can get if you can have decent thoracic mobility, decent hip flexor mobility, it just frees you up to do a lot more in the stroke and get this serapa effect happening. And I know that’s that’s a big chunk of what of what you do with people where you are and also online, like the functional sort of movement screening. So can you go into a bit of detail with the I guess the process

that you go through with with people to analyze where they’re where they’re at with their functional movement and then the the way that you go about helping them make those changes that they need to. Well, it’s you know, just starting off with their biggest problem, you know, they’ll say to me that their hip flexors are tight or they don’t know why they can’t generate power or, you know, for the chronic shoulder problem. And then we just generally look at what exercises they’re doing and I will, you know, I often just look at the technique. They say, well, call I’m doing squats, I’m doing this and I’m doing the pull downs, like you said, and then I’ll have a look at them and say, well, you know, you’re feeling the wrong position, your knees aren’t soft. You you it’s quite clear your thoracic spine is very stiff and you’re trying to generate power from from your from your arm and there’s no mobility going through the thoracic call the upper back

for those on from the medical term. So really just guide them through that. And also I do a lot with the mind and the body. So like I said, you know, are you trying hard here? And they say, Oh, I’m a perfectionist. I’ve got to get this right. You hear, especially with professional athletes, I’ve got to get this right. I’ve got to get this right. And and I just try just to actually say, go back to feeling and and suddenly they will say, but now my my whole body feels so much looser. What have you done? And I said, I haven’t done anything. All I’ve done is this point to you where that where the roadblock is where the handbrake is. And often with the hip flex is is it’s quite an emotional muscle. So this is why we’re finding a lot of people, besides sitting for long days and cars and chairs, it’s more than that is that we find the emotional link quite powerful. And so I say to my clients, you know, are you doing hip flex or stretches?

I’ve been stretching my hip flexors for years. And I say, well, how’s it going? So it’s it’s making a difference, but it’s not really making a difference. And I say, OK, well, we need to look at we’ve got to look at your posture and also look at the mind side of things as well. I think, like, you know, sports psychology and things that it’s a major player. So I cover all those topics. I don’t go into too much into psychoanalysis, but I just try and point to them are very common things that that go through people’s minds that can lock them up. Yeah, you talk my language. I one of the things that I kind of like to get an understanding of is what are some of the beliefs that people have about about swimming and about their swimming. And we see that a lot of a lot of the faults or the issues that will sort of come out in there in their technique is because of these these beliefs that they have about what they need to do in the in the

stroke and also just their general the general approach mentally to to their their swimming. So for example,

sometimes people want one big one, for example, is the recovery. So when the arms coming over the top of the water, people have been told you need a you need a high elbow recovery, get a high elbow recovery. And they see that as you need to bring your hand close to your body, get the elbow up nice and high. And it just throws the their whole body out of whack, especially if they’re tied through that thoracic movement. And it’s like, all right, number one, no, well, you sort of you don’t want to a low or a dropped elbow recovery, but just be open with that recovery, get that hand out wide, give yourself some some freedom to move. That’s going to free you up. And that is going to have this this domino effect with the rest of the stroke. So things like that, also with the catch, as people are moving through the catch phase of stroke, we talk about that as the setup phase. And don’t worry about the power there. It’s it’s all about get

yourself in a good position, then you can start to build up the power. So just getting them to to relax there. And again, that can be one of those things that is a handbrake for them. And and in terms of sort of mindset, it’s like some people put so much pressure on themselves to to to swim fast or to to improve that they they end up just thinking too much or or trying too hard and and not allowing themselves to just kind of go with the flow and feel the strike and swimming is so much of a feeling sport that being up in there in their head too much will will stop them from will often stop them from improving their their swimming. So yeah, I think we’re think we’re on the same page with that with that sort of thing. And was that something that you

that you’ve always sort of coached or was it something that you that you saw as you were working with people more and more? I think it’s saying I mean I love my sport is something I’ve experienced in my own body and and I’ve really seen the effects of just your working on the mind, the thoughts and also just working with, you know, I’ve been in the medical business now for over 18 years, just working with patients and people who who are just just recurrent ITB bands and they run recurrent hamstring problems, recurrent. And it just seems like we’re putting a plaster on on the, you know, we’re getting into this, what we call my facial stretches now and and we we really just really we’re trying everything. It seems like we’ve got a shotgun approach. I know it sounds but controversial, but we’re trying so many things to get people right and there are definitely results, but we often often we’re not getting to the simple things, like

they say, trying too hard.

We’d rather stretch the hamstring is I mean, the hip flex a luck, you know, till we really get it to burn or we just, you know, whatever we do, but we don’t realize that like a simple thought of just changing like take just take the foot off the gas with the trying to hard and you you’ll improve like 15 percent just like that, you know. So the other thing is, which is important is posture. We’ve talked about that before, but is is where where I also can help the guys is it’s getting the order of the exercises right. So it’s it’s trying to first get the nervous prime and nervous system and that that all starts by getting the spine is a better alignment. So, you know, you’re doing movements, maybe if you if you’ve got a hunched over posture, you’re doing some gentle extensions in the right position. And then you go into what I’ve talked about last time, the squats, the squats, I love the squats because it’s one of those things that’s kind of like if

your cell phone, although we passed those times now, but we’re in the olden days and your phone didn’t work, you kind of switch it on and back on it often and back on again. And the squat kind of just does that with the spine. It just sort of gets sitting back into into position quite quickly if it’s done correctly. And then from there, you take them through mobility rotational exercises. Once the spine is better and better alignments and a principle I have there is you always want to align vertically before you start aligning rotationally. So if your spine is not vertically in a good position, too much flex forward or too extended, then your rotational components are compromised. And so it’s really just guiding the guys into that position saying we’re not going to get it perfect in one session. But let’s before you start your gym session or land session, let’s just get your spine into a much better position so that you can then do those

rotational exercises. Yeah, that’s that’s something I’ve sort of come back to a lot, especially in the last six to 12 months when we’ve, as we’ve started to develop these core core principles, it’s like, you know, number one, you’ve got to be able to breathe, breathe correctly and relax. If you haven’t got that, then it doesn’t matter how good you are at the other things, you’re probably going to get tied pretty quickly. And then the second thing is finding your balance and a big part of that is the posture that you just mentioned. And and I’ve put a lot of focus into that with my own swimming, but particularly the guys that have been coaching. And if you get you, if you get your posture right, you get your breathing right and you can relax. You know, you’re halfway there because you’re just going to be able to apply so much more power and and just use the correct muscles and be so much more effective with them. So I think while it’s really, I guess

it can be fun. Yeah, it can be can be more fun to work on some of the the sexier aspects of the stroke, like the catch and the pool and all this other stuff. If you don’t have those those key fundamental things in place, then then you really find a losing battle there. So that’s why I think you know, the stuff that this functional and fundamental movements that you have a big background, you know, I think that is the best place to to start, especially for people who may not have been doing a lot of exercise, they might have taken 10 years off or 15 years off and then just gotten into it now, maybe what because their kids have grown up and they’ve got the time or if it’s just something that they’ve that they’ve picked up because they want to get fit. Those with that haven’t been sort of moving or exercising continuously since you know, since they dot, then it’s even more important because if you if you can’t move correctly, then that’s

when the injuries will come into play. And it’s going to it’s going to set you out for a couple weeks or a couple months or even longer. Exactly. And I think, like you said, also to say that we see it’s it’s amazing as body awareness. It’s just you ask the average, especially with the men, they just seem to be very disconnected to their body. So I mean, obviously elite athletes are more or more in tune with their bodies. But you ask them to lift up their arm and then and you say, do you feel anything? And they say, ah, you are a little bit. And then you say, well, how does your shoulder feel or actually it’s really, really sore? And I’m like, I wonder why they didn’t tell me in the first place or they just they can’t give you an idea of how high they’re lifting. And I think, you know, they may not particularly are so goal driven that they they just focus on the result and not paying any attention to the function or the form of the movement.

They just as long as they can bash out three sets of 10 and exercise, then they’re happy it’s done as a tick. And you know, I’m telling the guys, maybe just go even lighter, really pay attention to what muscles do you feel working? And often they’ll say to me online, I never really thought about that. And I’m going, well, this is the whole point. You know, you I want you to tell me, do you do you feel the glutes more than the hamstrings? Do you do you even feel your core? And they go, well, not really. I feel like my calves are doing everything. And I say, well, they are doing everything. And that’s the problem. And then you go and you do your foam rolling and all your your treatments and stuff, but you actually got to pay attention. That’s very hard in the pool, but you can also get the guys to they can go actually, I do. I feel like I’m my hammers are overworking in the pool. Yeah. Well, yeah, we had a camp in Hawaii back in March.

And a friend of mine, Annie Jones, she’s a swim coach based in Boulder. And she she came out and did some coaching there. And she took one of the open water sessions and she’s and I’m probably I’m a guy. I’m probably guilty of focusing more on the technical details and not turning into the my hippie side as much, I guess, so to speak. But Annie is very good at explaining the using analogies and getting getting swimmers to think about things in a different ways. So using stories and using cues to to kind of tune into how they’re feeling. And one of the big things she spoke about there was the swimmer who’s having the most fun is is winning. So just going going, especially open water, go out there and enjoy it and just have have fun out there and appreciate what a what an awesome place we’re getting to swim and and all this sort of stuff and just having that sort of mindset is is going to be much better in the long run than going out there

and just focus on getting from A to B as quick as you can. And I mean, obviously, there’s a balance of both, but tuning into that that feeling side can can help a lot. And I think swimming is is one of those sports that it is all about feeling. Yeah. And like you say, when you tune into that feeling side, then your right brain kicks in, you know, and that’s that’s more on the right hand side of the brain. So then you’re getting you’re getting a really good balance because it is it’s a it is it’s a balance you need. You can’t just be pulling hard on the right side and then an efficient on the left side. You want to try and get that balance. If there was somewhere we could strap electrodes to you while you’re swimming and actually get an idea of the force generation from left versus right and the swimmer they get that pretty much in that sort of range where it’s 50, you know, 45, 55, even 60, 40, I’d be happy with. But you’ll see that often

it’s it’s more than that. It’s like 70 percent right hand side, 30 percent left hand side. And as they start to enjoy the swimming that almost the nervous system naturally just goes into that that that you’re balancing of the system.

Yeah, and do you with the athletes that you’ve worked with sort of face to face or or online, what’s been the general timeline for them to sort of see a difference in in their in their sport in terms of results, how they’re feeling? What is it is it weeks? Is it months or does it differ depending on what those things that they need to to work on? When it comes to technique, it can be straight away. So if it’s a if it’s a postural position, you know, if it’s running, we look at the analysis and we say your foot’s in the wrong position or your head’s not looking, you’re not looking in the right direction or direction position, then they can be straight away. When it comes to muscles, it it really can also be quite quick from a postural point of view, long term, you’re looking at least maybe three to six weeks before you really see that that that overall change through the muscles. But the retraining of the pattern can be quite quick,

like three weeks and one and especially then corporate and everyday life. So even, you know, closing a sliding door at home or picking up something and they start to incorporate that Serapa effect just by doing, you know, things around that then it becomes accelerates that if they’re just doing it at gym once a week, it takes long obviously.

And I look at my three year old and he and just the way he squats to pick pick things up and it’s like perfect form. It saves it and then I try and do it and my I’m way too tight through my hips and through my Achilles and everything else. But it’s yeah, just trying to do that stuff day to day is really beneficial. So thanks so much for joining me on the podcast and for any athletes who are listening to this and you might have some niggles in your shoulders or knees or your hips or you feel like you’re just very restricted in some of the movements that you do. I’d recommend going to well getting in contact with with Carl. So where can people find you and what’s the best way to get in touch, Carl? Yeah, I have a website. So it’s a South African website. It’s a call reader coaching dot co dot set and it’s called with the C all they welcome to email me at call wellness at gmail.com. And that’s obviously called with the C again.

And I usually respond pretty quickly and just any any questions they have about their training as most welcome. That’s awesome. And for with those videos we’ll we’ll put some of those on the website at effortless swing dot com and link to your website as well. So thanks again, Carl. It’s been great having you back on and I’m sure you’ll be back on again too. So appreciate it. Thank you. Most welcome, Brent. Thanks for having me.

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.effortlessswimming.com.