Hello and welcome back to the podcast. This episode is a repost from a podcast that I recorded on the Get Fast podcast with Jordan and Jared Donnelly from Travello Coaching. So I was a guest on their podcast a couple of weeks ago and I thought this stuff would be really useful for people that like to listen to the Effort the Swim podcast. So I asked them if we could repost it or repost the podcast here on our channel and they kindly allowed me to do so. So go and check those guys out. They are triathlon coaches based in Melbourne and I work with a lot of their athletes with their swimming. So I really appreciate them having me on the show and to allow me to reshare this episode as well. So let’s get into the podcast. Here is the one that we recorded on the Get Fast podcast with Travello. This podcast is brought to you by Travello Coaching where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I’m your host Jordan

Donnelly and on my left is former Australian Ironman Champion and head coach of Travello Coaching, Jared Donnelly. Today on the podcast we have a recurring guest that we’ve had a few times, a very good friend of Travello now and that is Brenton Ford from Effortless Swimming. Brenton and Effortless Swimming are world leaders in swimming coaching online. Got one of the biggest swimming coaching channels on YouTube and as a business they actually have access to such a vast range of swimmers, age group swimmers, pro swimmers, elite swimmers that they have experienced and seen how to improve their swimming technique and swimming times and for that reason it’s why we absolutely love Brenton, why we love having him on the podcast and getting his advice on the best things that he’s seeing that can help improve you the fastest and really the best bang for your buck in terms of swim changes and technique changes. So another

great chat with Brenton today dad we always enjoy it. Yeah he’s a fantastic coach and I’m learning so much from him and all the listeners and those who have been through his clinics

from the Travello point of view are swimming better than they ever have and he gives us again some nuggets we really hone in on some really key aspects of drills and technique and you know really important things that the listeners should be implementing into their swimming training and and it’s full of it so I’m really excited to hear what the nugget city imparts on everybody in this episode so it was you know it’s it’s really one worth if you want to improve your swimming this is something you should be listening to. Absolutely without further ado here is Brenton Ford from Effortless Swimming.

Brenton welcome back to the podcast for I think a third time now you’ve been a very busy man over summer now that COVID lockdowns are finally ended you’ve been doing a lot of clinics you’ve been seeing a lot of people and you get the chance to see a wide range of athletes so we want to know straight off the bat especially recently over this whole summer of doing a lot of clinics what are the common patterns that you’re seeing at clinic and what are the common things that you’re seeing that people could really learn to improve on straight away just from what you observe? Yeah it’s it’s fairly similar that there’s been the last couple of years but what I normally find is it’s not a matter of effort for a lot of triathletes and a lot of them are putting in in the effort in the pool as long as they’re in the water a couple times a week it’s more just a matter of there’s some technical things there that are that are holding them

back and I think one of the first ones that that I see one of the most common ones is the timing of it is the ability to just be a little bit patient out the front with the arms as they’re reaching forwards so many people are just used to spinning their spinning their arms over and starting to catch really soon so I think having that that trust in yourself to give yourself a little bit of time in the in the reach phase so that you’ve always got something in in front of you and I know for triathletes they’re not looking to have this long in thought sort of stroke necessarily but too many of them are just dropping straight down so they just never make the most of that most efficient position when the arms out in front so I’d often start there is just looking to try and get front quadrant meaning always having something something out in front I mean you guys probably see that a bit too don’t you when you even if you go to the pool

and watch a few people swimming it’s it’s a pretty common one well why is that why is that necessarily a problem not being front dominant and having something out there all the time it’s a problem because it throws off the timing because if you’ve already moved your arm down and you’ve completed a catch early then it’s not very well connected with the rest of your body so normally your hips and your shoulders will still be on the side and the arms already completed the catch and so there’s no connection from your arm to to your body and in in swimming I mean in everything we’ve got to be connected and a big part of that is the timing so if you can take that little bit of time reaching forwards out in front then it gives you that little bit more time to then start rotating your your body back into the other direction so by the time your arms in that in that catch position which is where you start to really apply more force and

power well then it’s going to be connected up with your with your actual body because if you’re just pulling through and it’s not connected to your body well it’s just kind of wasted wasted effort so that’s why I can see someone swimming so quickly and making it look so easy it’s because their timing of the stroke is is very good one of the things that I’ve noticed in a lot of the video analysis is if you can see the difference between a really good pro swimmer and just an average an average guy or girl who’s in the water really trying to improve is there’s if you slow the the footage down there’s sections where there’s nothing in front of their head

there’s no there’s no actual arm in front of their head so they’re actually you know half a second where there’s you’re leading with your head is that something that’s common that you see in the video analysis yeah we’ve got groups like we keep it to six people per clinic and there’s times where four or five of those people will not be in the front quadrant at a certain point in there in their strength so it’s a really it’s a really common one so like a good trigger word or cue for that I think can be fingers to the front so when you enter I just think okay I want to get my fingers to the front pointing to the front of the the pool before you start moving your arm down and it’s good to go back and forth like do too much glide too much catch up and then do no glide whatsoever and then just find that sweet spot in between I think it’s really good to be able to contrast the yeah too much of it too little of it and then find that sweet spot but oftentimes people don’t allow themselves to

experiment enough with those things or maybe make mistakes and go too far one way and you just give yourself permission to do that it’s it’s a good way to to find that balance what would be the gold standard because when you like you’re saying when you look at the pros and how easy it looks because of their timing doesn’t look like they’re hanging out there at all they’re basically hitting and then bang this they’re straight back and their stroke rate looks quite high but for the average punter you try that and you’re kind of thrashing around a bit or you’re gliding too long when you actually yeah going a little bit too far so so how do you actually get to that sweet spot and how are the how are the pros doing it and making it look so easy yeah there’s it’s different for each person and and to be fair like not all elitism is our front quadrant every stroke like if you look at Gregorio Paltrenieri who won the 1500 at

2016 Olympics he he’s not front quadrant he’s just off it on one side but the other side he’s got he’s got really good timing now you wouldn’t necessarily want to train you know to train that in someone or teach that in someone but there are certainly exceptions there but most of those good swimmers are front quadrant even if it is just a just a little bit so you can have a stroke rate of 90 strokes a minute which for those listening that’s that’s quick it’s really quick and you can still be in that that front quadrant so it’s quite a small amount of time spent reaching forwards but it’s yeah it’s it doesn’t look like much but it’s just got to be enough really that’s that’s always sort of looking for the timing question that you raised that is the key isn’t it really it’s all about getting things in the right order and spending enough time and not too much time with each sector of the stroke and we’re trying to be really analytical here

and not too analytical that we’re confusing the people listening but the timing is one of the key things that’s going to improve your speed isn’t it yeah and I think one of the the ideas we brought up last time on the call was that slow to fast for most people they probably come into something they don’t sort of know the idea of your movements being should be slow to fast and for a lot of people that can be the thing that will help them get to that next level so when you reach forward you go through your catch that should be a little bit slower than you are at the back because once you’ve gone through your catch well then you should accelerate through the stroke a bit and finish a bit quicker out there out the back again not too much but a little bit of that slow to fast and that’s when you actually get this really good hold of the water if you’re just gradually accelerating through and I’ve had some is that I work with just online with our

stroke analysis and sometimes they finish really slow out the back and like they slow down and there’s just no momentum generated there’s no propulsion really the generated there but as soon as they make that change to accelerate through and they’re like oh my god okay I get it like they could have perfect shapes and technique and you know movements in the water but if they not actually accelerating through well they’re not gonna they’re not gonna feel much from it. Oh is that the same principle in terms of that when you’re thinking about slow to fast

where you want to like you saying before with trying to over glide for a little bit before you come back to that sweet spot is the same thing try and go really quite slow and then really quite fast to exaggerate that slow to fast approach and then practice getting that sweet spot is that what you recommend? Yeah it’s yeah play around with it and it’s it’s quite yeah it’s quite minimal the the difference in in speed as you go through it and you don’t want to have like sometimes you like we talk about the power phase and swimming is really it’s like once you’ve finished your catch and you’re kind of moving your hands under the under the shoulders that’s when you see this peak in in force so sometimes people will just try and like really just force that so like they’ll muscle their way through that part but good swimming isn’t uh isn’t overly you know over exerting yourself at any point through the stroke so um but it is good to just like practice that and then it can help you find that that middle

ground it’s uh really obvious when you see a 40 kilogram young 12 year old swimmer with no strength and muscle absolutely get the timing right and there’s a guy who’s next in the lane just got all the muscles that he you know the beach muscles but but it’s all to do with the timing in the technique isn’t it that you just can’t brutalize the stroke and that’s proven but the fact that you know young kids have no developed muscle like an adult yet they can swim so fast I get quite a few people who they’ll come to a clinic because they’re frustrated that they’re not getting quicker and they might be really fit but they’ve they’re getting lapped by someone who’s either like very overweight at the pool got a big bigger um or young kids who are you know half their half their size it’s that it’s that frustration of like I know that I’m fitter I’m stronger than the next person but why am I going as fast and it’s just yeah it’s all about

technique and and that efficiency of of movement and when you watch someone do anything well whether it’s running or riding or or swimming or surfing like the the movements are very um there’s not a lot of movement going on it’s everything’s quite yeah it’s very subtle it’s very very efficient so very often it’s a matter of yeah doing it’s a matter of doing less sometimes um less less movements um and so yeah just just trying to work towards that rather than trying to come over really fast rip really hard it’s like no just quieten it down and it might actually be a bit easier and faster so at risk of you repeating the same core principles that you talk about very often and uh if you want to know the core principles that the most common things people need to fix you can go check out Brenton’s five day catch challenge we highly recommend it um but what are the what are the things you’re seeing as as common patterns because uh you

could almost say that most triathletes are doing a bunch of the same thing wrongs you’re not you’re not going to get uh many athletes that are outliers where there’ll be some athletes where they’re doing something quite specific or quite unique to them but majority of us are doing the same thing so so what else is there um is there to look for in terms of common patterns that are really going to help create some big changes I’ve been looking a bit into their breath timing lately I’ve been doing a bit of work with a guy Brent Best who was he coached James Magnuson to two world titles in their uh 50 100 freestyle uh a couple of years ago and so I was talking with him and he’s worked with the Leedsomners for for a number of years and he’s sort of heavily into the swim scene and one of the things that he said he always looks for is breath timing so I started to look at that a bit and um it’s it comes up quite a bit

actually with with a lot of triathletes so breath timing as in uh many people will breathe too late in freestyle and too and too late basically means that if you’re going through your catch if you’ve finished your catch on one arm let’s say it’s your right arm and you’re breathing to the left if your head’s still out of the water and it’s not back down by the time you’re in that catch your breath timing’s probably too late so if you go through any footage of of Goodsomners in slow motion you’ll see their head is pretty much back down after a breath by the time they’ve finished their catch or just just past it because if your head’s still off to the side at that point well your hips and your shoulders are probably off to the side and you’re not going to get that connection from your catch to your your body because there’s this disconnect through that through that chain so um I’ve been looking at that quite a bit so a

good way to think of um when you should get the breath is pull yourself into the breath so if you breathe into the left hand side as your left hand is pulling through and it’s coming underneath your shoulder that’s when you want to start to turn your head and that way you can get your mouth and out of the water by the time your hand is still finishing that stroke out the back then you’ve got enough time to get the breath and bring it back down with that with that catch arm so to keep it simple you basically want to try and get your head back down by the time you finish your catch and not a whole lot of swimmers do that and you can actually if you if you go through footage of someone submitting slow motion you kind of see like yeah you can see that point where they’re disconnected and if their head’s off to the side it’s not until they get their head back down where you see this like nice drive and connection through the water and often

for many people it’s only like 15 20 centimetres out the back because that timing is is off quite a bit so I think that breath timing’s a a really good one to start with so pull yourself into the breath is quite a good cue to to use if you’re not sure whether or not you’re you turn your head at the right time and that that raises another issue on exactly the timing of the breathing is if you’re in the open water you’re still having to sight and and timing their sight every you know so often and and getting the head in the right position so you’re not you know ending up with your head out of the water for you know incredibly long period of time every 10 strokes yeah the the site it’s really interesting I was working with a guy who qualified for world champs just gone and he said oh look my swim times have come down it’s going really well but my open water times they’re just they’ve stagnated it’s a pretty pretty common one

like where you’ll get you might get the results in the pool but it doesn’t translate to open water and one of the first things that we look at there is well how’s your sighting like are you sewing yourself down because of how you sight and there’s a lot of triathletes that are just lifting their head up for a few strokes and then bringing it back down they’re not using the sight and breathe method which I think is just it’s just so much easier and it keeps the rhythm of your stroke where you don’t have to to break your rhythm you don’t need to swim for several strokes with your head up it’s just a quick look forwards kind of like crocodile eyes and then on the next stroke you turn to the side and breathe and just look up sight and breathe effortless swimming there’s a video on youtube if you’re if you’re wondering what that is if you’re listening and that can just be so much easier and that that might save you five seconds per hundred might even be more if

if your sightings are struggling it’s so easy to practice that stuff in the pool you can just throw in one or two sites every 50 meters if you if you do need to practice it leading up to a race but it’s one of the things that yeah many people I I think don’t know what they do with their sighting they just look forwards but yeah if you can change it to sight and breathe at least most of the time it’s it’s just such an easier way to go about it. If you’re coaching just a triathlon group would you put that into the program okay we’re going to do 10 by 50 and we’re going to sight breathe at 25 if it’s a 50-meter pool obviously but or maybe at 12 at 25 and at whatever the next 34 or whatever whatever the next section is would you do that in the in the program yeah I think so yeah like especially leading up to race season yeah you might do it a little bit in I mean you can do it whenever obviously but definitely eight to ten weeks leading into the start of the season would be a good time to start

practicing it like that and some some pack swimming just replicate the stuff in the open water which is you know it’s difficult to do when most squads probably aren’t doing any open water sessions but just if you can replicate that stuff in your in your pool session even wearing a wetsuit to get used to that at the start of the season it’s um it’s just so beneficial because open water can feel like a different sport sometimes to to swimming in the pool so if you can just get used to it as best you can it’s yeah it’s it’s very useful and have you what have you seen with the with your athletes with that kind of thing are you adding in some siding and some open water stuff we this is something we’ve spoken about and we really wanted to know from you because we haven’t put specific siding drills in really any of our programming but I was saying to dad the fact is that all of your racing is siding so should we not be actually doing siding as part of our natural stroke every single training session

not just doing it in the lead up to the race you know should every single one of our pool swims should we just be practicing our stroke with siding because I personally noticed that my stroke changes once I start siding out in the open water um so what’s the point of practicing my stroke one way in the pool then doing something different out in the open water so I’d love to know your thoughts on that and whether it’s something that you should just be doing all the time yeah I it’s uh I mean I think there’s there’s two sides of it one is it’s good it can be good practice every session but you probably don’t want to be practicing it throughout the whole session because I think a part of it is when you’re not siding it’s easier just to get into the rhythm and flow of things and and work on that that fitness and endurance and and swim strength um but it’s a good skill to be pardon me be able to um yeah to do at

least yeah maybe you do a little bit in the in the warm up even for if it’s half your sessions just to um just to get used to it and I know when I take time out of the open water which has been been a bit over the last few years it’s like it takes a little while to get used to it again so um I think it’s a good one to to include at least at least for some of your session every now and then so on the breathing topic and I’m really glad we’re talking about this one thing that I feel like for myself and other athletes you struggle to translate with is when you’re doing breathing drills for example uh or stroke drills where you’re using a snorkel again you’re really practicing good technique with the snorkel but then once you take the snorkel away and add the breath back in the technique goes out of the way so how do you get this balance of you know doing the drills which we know are so effective using snorkel and then

managing to keep your stroke the same once that goes away yeah it’s in our clinics we use fins and snorkel for the majority of it and so often people are swimming really well they’re feeling really good at the end of those drills and then as soon as they take the fins off they take the snorkel off it’s like okay I’m sort of back to back to where I was so it certainly takes time to be able to to transfer those skills across but they are they are really good tools to use because obviously the snorkel takes out the breathing so you can just focus on what your arms are doing you can focus on your head and your body position and so just kind of

and we recommend doing drills in primarily in your warm up just starting to maybe wean off it over the course of a few weeks or a few months so maybe you do half your drills with some equipment on maybe half of it without so just start to to take the equipment away but I think it’s also good just for most people to practice the correct breathing as in turn to the side don’t lift your head up too high so just breathing to the the side rather than lifting too high looking behind them and being able to do that quite quickly rather than lingering off to the side with the head which is a fairly common one so with a drill I’ve given quite a few summers recently just to help get used to that is kicking with fins on holding a kickboard in one arm with one arm and having your other arm by the side and you just kick face down in the water and then you turn to the side and breathe and and you try and do that quite quickly and just get used to that sort of breathing because if you can get it

fairly fairly fast you feel comfortable with it then it’s going to be much easier to do when you when you swim whereas for many people it’s kind of like a big gasp of air or it’s a big turn of the head just like make it make it look like you’re hardly you’re hardly even turning to breathe like someone would hardly recognize that you’re you’re getting it and then it’s going to be much easier in your in your swim stroke we’re definitely in a grance with all of you said what you’ve said so far um just can you just talk to the listeners a little bit about the importance of the drills and I feel as a coach that I’m getting kind of some resistance about it and and not seeing the value in and I do have a lot of uh swimmers who’ve come from squad swimming as a junior who were doing lots of drills in their training and the common comment I get is oh I don’t want to do drills I’ve done that my whole life you know I just want to swim

I just want to get fitter in the pool but you know we’ve had many many examples of people who’ve watched your videos and put those videos into practice in their in their sessions and they have improved incredibly um so can you just talk to our listeners about where you think the drill sits in the scheme of your swim program well I coached a master’s squad for eight years while I was sort of starting effortless swimming and most of those master’s swimmers were uh had come from competitive a competitive swimming background many of them were pretty good as as juniors as as teenagers and uh and I got a fair bit of pushback from from them as well so and probably I get it less so from triathletes or people who are new to new to swimming and I think it that’s partly because they’re just like they did drills as part of their squad there was no explanation of how to do them properly why they’re important and what they’re actually

focusing on so to them it’s just like well it’s it’s like what’s the point of of doing that if if there’s no actual reason reasoning behind it so the first thing that people need to get clear on is how do I actually do the drill properly and there can be quite a bit even to a simple drill like sidekick you know most most people would do sidekick wrong and so if there’s an explanation of okay how what do I need to do to do it right and and what’s the purpose behind it and and why does it actually relate to something that I’m trying to improve well then you’ll get a lot more more buy-in I think to it so um yeah it’s just a lack of um understanding in in many cases and I think it doesn’t need to be a lot because to change habits and there’s a great book which you you may have read Atomic Habits which talks about how you can basically if you’re looking at a goal that you want to achieve in 12 months rather than trying to break that down into okay well

in 12 months I want to get 10 seconds faster so in six months I need to be five seconds faster well no if you break it just down into what are the actual things that I need to do on a daily or weekly basis to get there then that’s a much better way of thinking about it and so a good thing to do instead of just like thinking I need to get five seconds faster than six months is okay if I need I need to improve my technique in some way so I need to do a couple of drills just in my warm-up each session and it’s that frequency that’ll get me there not the time spent doing drills so three hours of drills isn’t as good as like five minutes of drills three times a week it’s that frequency that’ll actually change those those habits for people so yeah it doesn’t need to be a whole lot and I think sometimes people are burnt out on drills because they’ve done so much for so long whereas yeah it doesn’t need to be a huge amount of them

we know that you’re a big advocate for it because you have such a wealthy library worth of drills which you’ve graciously you know partnered with us and allowed our tribello athletes to use which has made a massive difference and I guess dad you really want to get the point the point across that you are absolutely not saying that everything has to be drill focused and that it has to be a boring swim session in that regard but you want to get the point across and I guess you’d want to see if brenton agreed that you need to be spending adequate time that’s a really brilliant point as well as adequate frequency that’s what you’re trying to say right dad exactly and I think brenton’s answered it you know if it’s good enough for guys who are who are winning events to do drills then you know the majority of us are not in that standard and therefore it’s it’s it’s so much more important that we do that if it’s you know

if it’s good enough for Olympic champions to do drills well the everyday swimmer should be doing drills and the I find people often get to that point where they’ve they’ve worked they’ve trained they’ve worked as hard as they can in the pool they’ve got their fitness up and then they hit that that block where it’s like okay now it’s my technique that’s that’s holding holding me up and so that’s the point where then there might be more of a buy-in with with the drills but why not just avoid that and work on your technique as you’re going because you’re going to be at the pool anyway and if you include it as part of your warm-up well you’re not really it’s not additional time that you’re having to to spend it’s just it can be part of the the warm-up where rather than 850s of swim it might be 850s of 25 drill 25 swim so it’s nothing necessarily extra that you’ve got to do it’s just a part of what you’re you’re doing and

it’s unlikely that it’s going to work against you so likely it’s going to make you slower so why not give it a shot that’s a really good point that you’ve made is you know you can get as fit as you like in the pool and in the open water swimming but if you leave your technique as it is you’re going to stay the same almost aren’t you you’re probably not going to progress unless you do something more about your technique because unlike riding and running there is a small percentage of technique in in those sports but swimming it’s a skill acquisition which needs to be learnt and incorrect practice will only reinforce the same speed you know get your fitness level to a point and then you need to change something about your technique to actually get allow you to go faster if you don’t do that you know like we talked about last time as a golfer he goes and practices eight hours on the driving range and he’s got a massive hook

if he doesn’t actually change the swing to get rid of the hook he’s going to keep hooking on his match days and that’s kind of frustrating to to see that people don’t grasp that concept that great to be fit in the water but you won’t go faster unless you change something about the way you’re swimming to allow you to actually be faster and and you’ll hear it more from the elite level swimmers like your olympic swimmers you’ll hear more from them about technique they’re always thinking about it and they’re just looking for 0.1 of a percent change and there’s a good video from Caleb Dressel recently who’s the fastest 1500 freestyle in the world at the moment and he’s just he’s so attuned and so switched on to how his stroke is feeling and he’s just trying to find ways to to improve his technique and that’s in an event that lasts 21 seconds like it’s just for him it’s just so important and yeah and like people think you know you can just swim fast

and you’re always going to be like that but these guys are just even more dialed into that that stuff not not less than than your average person. Water biomechanics I mean I mean what’s the what’s the word it’s not aerodynamics in the water but what’s the hydrodynamics? Hydrodynamics maybe and it’s so complex you know you think about how complex aerodynamics is on the bike and how much testing goes into it and Brenton we were talking about surfing off air which we both love and in that sport there is just so much going into shapes of boards and shapes of fins and how that affects the water and the resistance against water is so complex because especially out in the open open water the water is always changing and so you can see how important this is to try and get that right and why the professional swim is obviously in a pool environment it’s a bit more controlled but they are looking for those minute changes that can

give them that point one or point two because through the water every single movement that you’re doing will either increase that fluidity that you have or decrease it and create more resistance in what you always speak about more drag and you’ve really got to pay attention to that because you’re either making it harder for yourself or easier for yourself. They did there’s a coaching organization in the States called the Race Club which is run by a guy called Gary Hall Senior and he’s ex-olympian and I think Olympic coach and he they did this test where they’ve got a machine that will basically pull you along and they can also measure the the drag that’s created at the same time they did this test where they had a swimmer going to streamline position with their toes pointed so just your traditional classic streamline off the wall they tested that then they did the same thing and they got the swimmer to

point their toes to the bottom of the pool so like if you had really stiff ankles terrible ankle flexibility that’s how you’d probably be kicking and they found that there was 41% more drag more frontal drag created from just the feet or the toes pointing down nothing else and it’s like that’s a huge amount more drag from just the toes pointed down so

you can see there how just these minute changes can really start to to make a difference particularly if it is reducing drag which is kind of the first thing we want to want to look at before we move on to the propulsive part which is the catch in the pool. So on that note something I’d love to get your thoughts on is when you go to the pool it is you can see the difference in buoyancy between swimmers and the whoever’s on top of the water is just it’s just flying along and people that are sinking a little bit and creating more drag and it’s often the more muscular men compared to the potentially lighter children or even you know people with more body fat tend to be more buoyant and that’s the case with wetsuits as well so how can you fix that buoyancy and how can you get yourself higher in the water? There’s certainly a difference between people where some people naturally they’ll sink more so there’s no there’s no denying that there’s

a difference there and I mean even myself I’ve got heavy legs in the water I can’t I can’t get myself to float in the water where everything’s up at the the surface but it’s not a reason why it’s not an excuse to why you can’t swim faster there’s ways kind of around it so I think the first thing is how you hold your body but if you’re if there’s no tautness through the body then you’re just going to sink and the other the other flip side of that too is when you’re relaxed you actually float better whereas if you’re really tense well then you’re going to sink like a rock so first of all you’ve got to relax if you’ve got that natural fear or panic when you’re in the water then we’d probably want to start there so you can relax but then once you are relaxed we need to add this little bit of tautness through the body so that’s keeping your chain from your head all the way down to your toes somewhat taut and rigid

in a way where it’s not like this wet noodle going through there and so we talk about this as tall and proud posture, brace your core like someone was going to hit you lightly you’d switch that on and you also sort of need to squeeze your butt cheeks together a little bit so engage your glutes slightly and that way you’ve got this this tautness through here whereas then when you’re lying face down in the water you can put a little bit of downwards pressure through your chest because your lungs are where your buoyancy is so you can apply a little bit of downwards pressure there to push down and that’s going to help bring the the back half up and it’s a very fine line between going too much and not enough kind of like the other stuff that we’ve talked about there’s that sweet spot but that’s how most people can find that that balance so a good way to perhaps start with that would be just a front kick drill with both arms out in front of you

so hands are directly out in front you’ve got a snorkel on no fins and just kick really lightly and play around with those couple of things and see if you can get your head, hips and heels at the surface playing around with those those couple of things and if you can get that there well then you can start to implement that into your your actual swim stroke and and maintain that balance. Should you’re talking about this buoyancy factor and there’s a really good point you said your head hips and ankles sort of try to be out of the out of underneath the water is there any point where your head should be submerged and is it an advantage to get your head not on an angle but in the same line as you’re talking about the tautness but to get that head lower is that going to help with bringing your feet up or is that not actually happening? Yeah to a certain point I think too many people think that the only way to get my legs up is

it’s all about head position so I’ve seen people bearing their heads underneath where like at 10 centimetres below the surface of the water and they’re swimming almost underwater and it’s really hard to get a breath from under the water so as long as you’ve got your head in the right position and you’ll see most good swimmers have actually got just the top part of their head actually out of the water and they’re looking either straight down but usually just slightly forwards for most people that’s that’s more comfortable that’s that’s easy so as long as you’ve got that there then you know more times it comes down to the stuff that I’ve just just mentioned so head position certainly plays a part and many people do look too far forwards with their their chin forwards but if they’ve got it got it right then it’s probably probably something else so but you don’t yeah you don’t want to swim with your head completely submerged because it’s just

you’ve either got to lift up really high to kind of breathe or you’ve got to turn really far to to breathe so I’ve seen some coaches talk about get your head all the way under but it’s just I find it quite awkward for most most people you don’t really see that at the at the top level when we’re talking about uh the the technical side of swimming and I want to relate this a little bit to the fitness side so we there’s no denying no one’s disputing you need to be fit in the water um if you’re a triathlete or if you’re just you know an endurance racing swimmer you just need to have really good fitness no different to a runner or a bike rider but at the at what we’re really asking here is in the training sessions should you be combining both the endurance and the speed work at when you’re possibly going to swim with poor technique as you get tired I say you’re doing sets of four by 500 meters and after 200 meters of

every 500 your stroke goes back to its old stroke because you’re not fit enough to hold the stroke are you better off whilst you’re learning the news technique for your stroke just doing shorter intervals all the time so you can hold the correct form what’s your thoughts on that yeah there’s there’s an argument for both of shorter versus longer and I think you know most people are going to do do both somewhere along the along the line and I think it’s when you’re changing your technique you’ll usually break down a little bit earlier and you won’t be able to maintain it throughout the whole session so those short intervals can be really good to to hold form and yeah whether it’s 25s or 50s or 100s just taking that five or 10 seconds rest after each one gives you that reset and that pause to then go okay yep I can give my muscles a bit of a rest and then I can go again and I can maintain that new technique or better technique so I think it’s a

really good approach as you’re changing your technique there it’s also good I think to get to that point where you’ve like you’re breaking you’re starting to break down you’re starting to break down and maybe you hit that point and it gets a little bit messy but you don’t want to be training that too much you don’t like you don’t want to just be doing that for half a session because well obviously it’s training training bad form and yeah you’re better off just taking a bit of a rest and then then starting again so like I’m a big fan of both and I’m like I think for many people some longer intervals can be great especially if they’re doing half full distance Ironman it’s really important but that said if it’s just getting sloppy and they’re practicing the wrong thing well maybe you’re better off actually just shortening it and I mean you did get a bit of resistance from people who maybe haven’t grown up around the pool

they don’t know what a what a good swim set looks like whereas you know it is okay to do hundreds and two hundreds rather than just like a straight 1000 for your whole session it’s actually preferred to to break it up so I mean I’m sure you’ve yeah you’ve seen that with with people and just educating them on what a what a typical swimmer would would do it’s very rarely much more than a 200 or a 400 you know for most of them something we like to think about and try and manipulate is the rest times though because obviously the shorter rest periods that you can have in between the more potential fitness gain you’re forced to create but at the same time you don’t want the rest to be so short that you’re actually not recovering properly and therefore your technique is continuing to be sloppy so what are your thoughts on optimal rest periods for especially if you’re starting to do long intervals like hundreds 200s 400 up to 400 500

yeah it depends on the on the effort that you that you’re putting in and the type of set that you’re you’re looking to do but yeah like for when we’re doing a more aerobic based set those rest intervals are reasonably short it might be like five or 10 seconds for 100 might be 15 to 20 seconds for a for a 200 and maybe maybe 20 to 30 for like a for a 400 but again just depends on the the effort that you that you’re doing and what you’re trying to get out of the get out of the set but I think most people seem to I’d say most triathletes don’t like resting too much because they’re thinking their thought is I’m losing my fitness I’m going to lose the the gain from this set so just from my experience I think

they can give themselves more rest than what they’re giving themselves just yeah from what I’ve seen what what do you guys find there yeah I look I agree with what you’re saying there in and just so the listeners are clear if if you’re swimming at a lower intensity then what you’re saying Brenton is that the rest should be short but if you start to swim with and you were asking you to swim at threshold or or faster than threshold then you need to give yourself more rest and and five or ten seconds over a 400 if you’re doing four by four hundreds you’re not going to be adequately if you’re asked to swim at race pace you’re going to be struggling to repeat the efforts you need you know 30 to a minute would you agree with that yeah yeah that’s right and I mean I was talking to who was it Dave Tilbury Davis who’s a tri coach he was he I think he got this I can’t remember which coach he got it from but he was saying like a good test set is seven I think seven one hundreds with like race effort

with five seconds rest in between and he said like most people will blow up around three or four maybe five 100s and if you can sustain that for seven at race pace well that’s like that’s a good sign that you’ll you’ll really fit and so that’s only seven seven one hundreds with the short amount of rest so yes I think yeah most people they need that they need that more more rest than than less especially if they’re putting the effort in and yeah just go most people they think they’re just losing that fitness gain as a result of just staying at the wall but yeah you got to let that heart rate come down especially if you’re doing any sorts of sprints or you know above race effort stuff and if you took the principle and related it back to cycling or running for example you wouldn’t do some big cycling or running efforts and give yourself such a short break that the rest of the efforts becomes too sloppy it’s just not

it’s just not the case whereas it can and this brings me to kind of the next point it can happen in swimming a lot in swimming there seems to be this culture of just more volume is better and more grinding is better and more time in the pool is better and it’s just how can I get a maximum amount of volume what are your thoughts on that and you touched on frequency before with you know you need the more frequently you can practice drills especially with technique the better it’s going to be rather than more time in one session so what are your thoughts on you know a frequency of actually swimming and total volume throughout the week and this culture of really trying to do more yeah there’s always a balance between the two sessions minimum three for most people I’ve just seen people who have gone from two sessions a week up to three they’ve seen a big difference and then four four can be great as well it

just depends on how much time the person’s got but minimum three is what I’d suggest for most people and you will see a difference if you’re coming from two and yeah just the the volume like I mean even not so much now but I certainly a couple years ago I had in my head you know if I’m not doing at least 3k or 4k and for some people it might even be like 5k it’s like if I’m not doing that while I’m wasting my time but there’s just so much that can go into a swim session rather than just the distance is that’s a small component of an actual swim session and the distance that you do isn’t it doesn’t dictate what you’ve actually got from that that session it’s just it’s a small component of it so I think there’s part of that is good and some people will definitely improve by doing more but I think better quality is the way to go especially for a sport that’s so technically important important is swimming where yeah the

quality of your session will actually make a bigger difference than just getting more more volume done so yeah that’s that’s kind of my my view on it I find it a little bit ironic that we like exactly what you just said that with a sport that’s so focused on technique you would assume that quality of session is more important yet the sports culture and I’m not I’m not hating on swimming here I just find it so fascinating that the sports culture is so much about quantity when the performance basis of the sport is about quality I just yeah find that really ironic there’s a swimmer Michael Andrew and he’s a US Olympian he’s since he was about 12 or 13 he’s he’s done this thing called US RPT which is uh ultra short race pace training developed by I can’t remember his name he developed by a coach and he kind of wrote out the protocols protocols for it and it’s basically like you do a little bit of warm-up but then your session is

like it’s 25s more maybe maximum 50s and they’re essentially all at race pace with a reasonable amount of rest in between and he’s done this since he was 12 or 13 I think and he’s probably 20 now and so there’s this whole question around is like is this just how’s this going to work especially compared to the the volume base of most most programs it kind of went against the grain where it’s like much shorter sessions and there’s but there’s no like just junk miles or anything it’s all just race pace and he’s like he’s one of the best swimmers that the US has got at the moment and it’s a case for doing something completely different and I think most programs are now sort of going a mix of the two some of this ultra short stuff and still doing the distance and it depends on the thing you’re training for but yeah I think it’s it’s it’s interesting to see someone do something completely different yet still yield the same if not better results and less injuries and all that sort of stuff too

we talked about that so many times uh off air about far out if someone who could just be a world leader in performance do something different and then you watch everybody follow because that we’ve seen that with you know the classic example is the Norwegians what they’re doing in triathlon at the moment is just you know it’s leading the world in a different way of of training and and and what’s what’s that like how they’re doing it differently yeah it’s a tough one to summarize but in short they are definitely paying more respect to lactate levels and staying out of

the middle chunk gray area that we call it and they’re doing a lot more in zone two and then a lot more at race race intensity and above so they’re staying out of that middle area where we would just you know everyday cyclists and runners um I’m not sure about this swimming program but most of the time they’re actually either doing a specific intensity session or they’re trying to build their aerobic capacity and and they’re keeping their by taking their blood lactate they are making sure that they’re not going in sneaking above it um would that be a good summary Jordan yeah and they’re really the the way I see it or try to summarize it is they’re optimizing their body so scientifically and structurally for the race that they’re training for so by the time they they’re getting into their kind of race ready phase um all their sessions um are at their race pace um not all their sessions but their sessions are at their

race pace or just at uh just under that under that kind of threshold zone um and they are yeah really heavily lactate testing to make sure that they can handle that pace and their lactate is not going through the roof and that allows them to be really confident on race day that they can hit these zones um confidently knowing they’re not going to blow up um and they they’re even lactate testing in the pool which is crazy they’re finishing a wrap getting up out of the water and he’s pricking the area and um it’s pretty wild and um and they’re doing something else in the pool uh with like a some sort of um I don’t know biomechanical measure which is just again just pretty revolutionary but they’re just doing all these things that are so so science based they’ve got this whole team of sports scientists that are leading away with every session and um it’s so different to what most of the sports used to which is just um

you know training hard and training consistently and it’s it’s a bit more vague in the in the instructions that’s what we find so fascinating about it is there an easy way to do lactate testing for the average person or is it yeah not not that easy to do in training there’s no point measuring your lactate unless you’ve got a proper test uh to base it off and to do that you do need the help of a sports scientist or someone to you know make sure that the test is valid make sure that you’ve uh done it properly make sure the results are recorded properly and then interpreting that data is really important as well so make sure you’re interpreting that correctly once you’ve got all that you could definitely uh get your own lactate measure you can buy home kits um and do it yourself at home well once again they’re they’re relevant for only really specific sessions and not everyone is doing those sessions in their block so um if you’re

doing a hard vo2 max session uh you don’t even worry about lactate because you’re just going as hard as you can but what the Norwegians are doing they’re doing so many of these sessions where they’re for running for example they’re doing you know three by thirty minute efforts and they have to keep their lactate at a certain level for those those 30-minute run or right efforts um and so that’s where the difference is yeah so uh if you’ve got if you’re going low to money and and lots of people around you you could get the sports scientists in to help you with your training but the point the point that yeah we’re alluding to is that uh if someone has a breakthrough success and um you know um Christian Bluntfeld won the olympic uh medal at the triathlon and two weeks ago he’s just gone out and won the uh the world championships at i-man so he’s not only uh you know won an olympic level it was a completely different race to an i-man um under

the same training and and they’re setting a standard with with a slightly varied training method and that’s what we’re trying to say here is you know with forever you know for people who are swimming at olympic level for 50s for hundreds for 200s um they’re doing as you just said before five k in the morning five k in the afternoon seven days a week possibly you know and here we are you’ve just given us an example of someone who’s not doing that and getting similar success which is uh which is a really great to see and you know there should be more of it yeah no i think a big a big sort of reason why i like the part of the usrp t stuff is that it’s for many of the kids growing up swimming they don’t enjoy the long the long kilometers some of them love it like i loved it as a kid i love the longer stuff but i was an anomaly i think maybe you know nine out of ten kids probably just hate going up and down the pool whereas this

this shorter stuff they’re getting times every 25 it’s very uh specific they know what time they need to do they can see whether or not they’re hitting those goals and it’s not boring for them so i think it’s a good thing to keep kids in the sport and then you’ve you know if you’ve got more kids in the sport then you’ll hopefully see more success down the down the line for for the sport but also just more world records and that sort of thing so yeah i think it’s it’s great to see people doing things differently and and that’s a good example of it even emin mckayin at the olympics she had an amazing olympics she ended up um reducing her swim sessions from like eight down to four or five and instead of swim eight swim sessions she was doing more gym work and she just was she was so strong she was so fit and she was just on fire and it worked incredibly well for her and you know she’s getting getting

a little bit older and for her it was just she needed that strength but she didn’t need the swimming as much and so it’s um yeah it’s good to see people mix it up and have good results last question from us last topic we wanted to touch on is that for a lot of triathletes especially here the summer season it’s finished and they’ve got a decent break to their next race there are definitely some races that they can do over this period but some might not have another race for another three to six months that they’re looking forward to so how do you approach an off season in terms of swimming how do you change things up maybe to freshen things up or to give a bit of variety or a bit more enjoyment what are your thoughts on on an off season for swimmers i think first of all sitting down and just analyzing the last season can be helpful so just pen and paper what worked what did i like where are the gaps or the holes in in what i’m doing and just using pen and paper and and putting

your phone in a different room i know for me if i’m like sitting there with my phone there i’ll i’ll be there for five minutes and get distracted so i think looking at at that and just just writing for 20 or 30 minutes and and just seeing what opportunities might be in front of you for the next season and then at the pool you know there’s no pressure to perform there’s no pressure to sort of do anything and when when it’s like that it’s much easier to enjoy being in the pool so i quite like just wearing fins for most of my sessions feeling very relaxed trying some new things doing some a few different drills and just just enjoy the feeling of being in the water and when you’re in that state of mind or that zone in the pool you tend to swim better you tend to improve and if there’s anything that you learn or figure out during that time where you’re where you’re doing that then you might be able to carry that into your

into your season so i think a time where there’s no pressure or or reliance on doing a certain set or certain times is is a good time to just mix things up and try try different things so that’s where i think you can start to have maybe more of a technical focus and and it’s okay to try different things because you’re not going to harm your race that might be a nine or nine or twelve months time we couldn’t agree with that anymore i think that’s exactly what we would like to see in the off season it’s the same advice we offer for swimming, riding and running just taking that bit of pressure off from a from a structured program anything else from you dad before we finish off no as usual brenton’s given us some really good things to consider and to implement into our into our thought process and and look we don’t talk a little a lot about the the mental side of swimming and the only other question i really

wanted to ask was i do get a lot of uh swimmers asking me how to overcome the anxiety on race day they’re surrounded by you know if possibly you know a thousand people around them in the water swimming over them around them bumping into them a lot of you know a lot of them have this anxiety and fear of of the unknown i suppose what advice would you give those swimmers who are who experience in that and it’s not a minority it’s it’s i would have 50 of the people like coach who are in one form or another very worried about swim leg of the of the triathlon

aside from getting used to being around others in the pool if you have that opportunity which is if you’re not swimming in a squad or not can be hard but that just getting the practice with others around is good just to build up the the comfortability in the water but that aside i think just control your breathing at the start line would be the would be the first thing and because your breathing is the only part of your autonomic nervous system that you can actually control so for me if i’m at the start line i’m breathing through my nose i’m going five seconds in five seconds out and i’m just calming myself down and trying to keep the heart rate low in the beginning and also if you can do a pre-race warm-up even if it’s 200 strokes but yeah just a pre-race warm-up will help you get more console because if you haven’t got your heart rate up before the race then you sort of realize you notice this whether you’re going out for a run

or swimming is it’s like you haven’t sort of opened up your your blood vessels enough where if you just if your heart rate goes up but you kind of feel this like it’s like really you feel like you just run out of energy so if you can get your heart rate up a bit before the race then that can overcome some of it and the other side of things is

don’t be a victim going into the into the race so you don’t want to be aggressive with other people obviously but don’t take the the victim role where you’re just at the whims of what everyone else is is doing you want to be the one out there who’s who’s in control if you’re else other people are going to take you over and people aren’t out there to try and swim over you the fastest point from here to there is not swimming over the top of someone people are going to try and go around you and avoid you but obviously it doesn’t happen all the time so if you if you just try and take that you know to take that role where you’re in charge and and just and do your thing maybe you got to start off to the side if that makes you more comfortable that’s okay as well or maybe you wait five seconds and let those people go if it’s a real issue for you then you know you’re not probably going to lose time if you let people go for five or ten seconds and you just

swim your own swim your own race so there’s strategies and tactics you can you can use there to make it a bit easier on yourself and one of the things that I often tell each of the swimmers who really are struggling is it’s okay to look up and give yourself five or ten seconds and I’ve even said roll over on your back relax take some breaths you’ve lost ten seconds roll back over and just take that anxiety focus away from it just to think that right I can control this myself if I’m you know overwhelmed and and and not breathing properly it’s going to continue and get worse and you’re going to actually swim worse you’re better off giving yourself ten seconds every and I’ve told them to do ten seconds every 400 just you know I’ll swim for 400 and I deserve a little rest to have and as you do each event you will actually get better and better at that and as you practice that in training so I know that’s not helpful to

your overall time by doing a 10 second break but but if it means you can actually get get the focus away from you know the anxiety factor it’s got to be helpful it’s like walking through aid stations in a in an Iron Man it’s like give yourself that little bit of a you know downtime and yeah it’s going to add some time on but maybe it’ll actually be be better for you in the beginning and I had a swimmer who did her first triathlon a couple weeks ago and she said like similar thing happened she panicked at the start and was doing a bit of breaststroke and like her time was was quite slow because there was that that panic and it was her first race and you know even no matter what advice you have in that first one people are going to make those mistakes anyway it’s just that rush of an excitement of the first triathlon so just yeah just build on that experience each each time and adjust as you go because I don’t know anyone who’s now their their

first open water swim and going yeah that was easy that was great and boy did I do a good time that’s a brilliant way to finish great advice from you both thank you very much Brenton for joining us if you want to find where he is it’s effortless swimming on any of the social medias Instagram Facebook or YouTube as we said earlier he’s got a brilliant five day catch challenge that you can start you’ve also got Brenton a new eight week course that you’ve built out is that correct yeah which similar sort of structure but we focus on all the other parts of the of the stroke so I’d say do the catch challenge first and then move on to the eight week course afterwards as always make sure you like this video wherever you’re watching it or if you’re listening to the audio make sure you subscribe subscribe anywhere you are listening or watching this it really does help us Brenton thank you very much again for joining us thanks

to have me enjoyed it thanks guys that’s it for this episode and we’ll see you next time