This swim is, what it is, is that the squatting, when we talk about doing it properly, is it really unlocks the hips and the back and it provides that mobility and even swimming. And one of the key parts of the spine is in the middle back, which just as the middle back goes into the lower back, you got the rotational component. And when that is very common, locked or stiff in a lot of people. And so what happens is your lower back then overworks and that’s where you go to Kairos or osteophysicists who then start to manipulate and release that tension. When you start to the squatting properly, you start to release that rotational, transitional area in the spine and that then connects the whole body. That’s where you get all this movement from. So you really see the benefits, the squatting made another direct effect on the swimming like you just clearly pointed out, but it’s that the release you get from doing squats in the back

that then translates to the swimming. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Hi, welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. This is episode number 188. My guest today is Carl Rita and here’s a background in exercise physiology and Pilates, but primarily working in functional movement. And we’ve recently created a course together which is functional movement for swimmers. And in this course, Carl teaches you how to do some of the primary movements, correctly, that are gonna help you as a swimmer. And some of the differences here between what you might have seen in perhaps other programs or other courses is that in this program, we are really looking to make sure that you stay connected, that their full body movements are not just isolating individual muscles. And the reason for that is when we swim,

it is all about that connection. You may have heard me talk a little bit about the Serape effect, which is essentially the connection through your hips, through your torso and shoulders. And that is a really key component of being able to connect up your catch with your rotation and your kick. And I really like the phrase swimming from the inside out, meaning your core and your hips. That’s where you generate a lot of power from. And it’s these exercises within the program that are going to help you develop that kind of connection out of the water so that you can have that type of connection in the water. So if you’re interested in that course, then you can find that at effortlesswimming.com forward slash Carl and that’s C-A-R-L, so forward slash Carl. And I’ll also put the links in the show notes as well. So let’s get into the episode. In this episode, I chat with Carl about what are some of those common mistakes

that we see people make when they’re doing the strength-based or dry land exercises and what can you do to make sure that you’re doing them correctly? How can you avoid or overcome injury with them? And what are some of the most important things that we should be thinking about as swimmers or as triathletes when it comes to adding dry land to our existing program? Let’s get into the podcast. Right. Hey Carl, welcome to the podcast for the third time.

Yeah, good to be back. So we’ve been chatting over the last couple of months and you’ve been putting together a course for swimmers specifically, working on more functional movements that will help people either stop, avoid getting injured, but I think probably more importantly is those people that have got recurring injuries, how can they overcome them and how can they develop strength through those certain areas where they are consistently getting injured and how can they do it so that they don’t need to take time out of the pool? And you wanna talk a little bit about some of those exercises that you have been recording in the course and also sort of how it came about and what your background is with working with swimmers. Yeah, sure. You know, I’ve been doing this for the 20 years and I’m working with exercises and early on in my profession, I noticed that many of the sort of traditional exercise and stretching routines

are not working for a lot of patients and clients, particularly with low back and shoulders and knee issues. And then I realized that many of the movements that we’re giving were not movements that were necessarily functional or movements the body was designed to do even though they were scientific. And so for the last basically two decades, I’ve been researching and rediscovering what the body’s functional movements look like and how to master the techniques to do them. And in the six week course, I really share a lot of my insights and the functional movements that I’ve been working on in the course that’s to give a really good solid foundation to help people to move in the way that I believe the body’s designed to move. And it’s when you move in that, what I call the body’s method for exercises, then you get great results, particularly with shoulders and low back. Yeah, I’m watching through the videos from the course

and also having been doing a lot more strength than I was in the past with not being able to swim right now. It seems like a lot of the issues that people probably get from doing strength work incorrectly or from doing normal swimming and they get injured. A lot of it seems like it comes from the movements not being sort of functional, so sort of full body movements where they’re probably just isolating or loading up too much through their lower back or through their shoulders. Is that what it seems like from your end? Absolutely, we’ve been trained to isolate muscles or focus on a particular joints and then this idea of body weight, so using the whole body to generate power, particularly the shoulders, it’s a good topic in terms of injuries because a lot of shoulder workouts or recovery programs try and strengthen, for example, ricketycut. So they focus on ricketycut strengthening exercises or bicep strengthening exercises

where the shoulders so much connects to the hips and to the whole body. So it’s learning through that in the class and the course, how do you generate power with all the big muscles helping the shoulder? Yeah, and that’s what I’ve liked about watching through the, as you take, you go through the exercises. I mean, I’ve been doing quite, let’s say probably half the exercises just in my weekly strength and conditioning stuff lately and I know I’ve been doing some of them wrong after watching the videos and what I like about, you know, you talk about the Serape effect and how can we generate that power through our hips and through our upper body and like it doesn’t require a massive change in the way that you do exercises, but it’s this little minor 10% change that can really, I think, develop that Serape effect and connection through the body, which is really key in swimming. And I mean, I was talking to a physio a couple of months ago

about just one long distance to know that he was working with. And I don’t know if we talked about this last time, but this guy had shoulder issues all the time. And one of the things that this physio found is that he wasn’t kicking at all, like his legs just stragged behind him. And so it was loading up his shoulders too much. So he didn’t have that stabilization through the kick that’s transferred through the body. And that’s a good example of someone who’s not having that connection through the body and not using that Serape effect. So that’s what I think some of these exercises are really good for in developing that, but it doesn’t need a massive change at all for a lot of people. No, just to learn, to experience and to feel, we talked about that in one of our last podcasts, that connection, just how the whole body is connected. And so just as they work through the exercises, they’ll start to really train that what does it feel like?

Because if you say you don’t want to be having two left arms or two right feet, you can, with the exercise, it will help to build that connection, which I think is very powerful, especially for swimmers. Yeah, absolutely. And I put out a survey about who’s got recurring injuries that stop them from or impact their swimming. And I think it was 44% of people said they do. So nearly half the people who were probably adults, most of our swimmers are sort of 30 to 60 years of age. Almost half of them have got recurring injuries. And if they can get rid of those injuries or they can develop the strength to be able to overcome them, then it’s going to mean that they can spend longer in the water, where they’re not having one or two or three weeks out. And it means that they can keep that build of their training going. So they’re not having to take these ongoing periods of time out. And so one of the most common ones that popped up

was shoulder issues. This is obviously one of the main ones with swimming is shoulder issues, particularly rotator cuff. Where do you see a lot of those issues coming from for swimmers that you’ve worked with?

Well, especially for not the elite athletes, but swimmers, it would be obviously posture plays a major role. And one of the huge benefits of moving functionally is you’ll see great results and change the posture straight away. And then obviously not balancing the opposing muscles. So if swimmers are not, they’re just working on the pulling action, they’re not on the pushing action. So we see that that’s one of the things I address in the course as well. It’s hard to train and strengthen, balance the muscles. So that asymmetry that we see in swimmers, I said posture, but obviously people who work at a day span most of the day, that puts a lot of strain on the body. Then we also talked about a lot of upper back stiffness. The thoracic spine, your upper back, your lot of stiffness up through, which is related to posture again, can be related to posture. They’re often just loosening up the upper back has huge benefits for releasing shoulder problems.

And as you know in swimming, it’s quite a lot of rotation and movement, depending on the stroke you’re doing, but you need that mobility, which is key for shoulders. And often with shoulder problems, it’s not even the shoulder. It’s often it can even be, as we know, it can be the hip, the back, it’s complex. But by moving function, it’s the key thing I want to get to the swimmers is by moving function, it’s almost like it’s resets the body and it’s just the fix are great. And for somebody who’s listening to this and thinking, yeah, that’s me. I’m pretty stiff my upper back, sometimes got issues with the shoulders and it might stop me from swimming or it might just mean I can’t go as hard as I’d like to, but I can’t be bothered putting in the work. What would you say to, how much does it take for someone to make a change to the things that we’re talking about, to their mobility and to the way that they move? How long do you think it is for someone from the get-go

to see those changes and to notice them? And then how long until they can see, not necessarily a permanent change, but a change that is really noticeable?

You know, so referred to as the minimum effect of dosage in a sense, you really, you don’t need to be doing hours and hours a day up. If you could choose maybe two or three of those exercises, you know, specifically for the shoulder and do them almost every day for five to 10 minutes or even in between like what I call movement snack. So if you’re at your desk and you stand up and do a few movements or mobility exercises that are literally two, three minutes then you can see changes pretty quickly. You know, a lot of plants have actually, after even a weekday, they’re not gonna see major posture changes, but they’re gonna feel differences and mobility changes in the shoulder. Yeah, and I find with a number of things, for me it’s like a sort of a five to six week turnaround of doing something consistently. And I talked about this in a recent YouTube video with, for most people I think if they, when they get back into the pool after taking say two

or three months off with all of the lockdown stuff happening, for most people I reckon they can get back to where they were pretty close to it within about six weeks if they’re training relatively intensively or eight to 10 weeks if they’re just sort of easing their way back. For most people, and obviously elite athletes are different. They were training 10 times a week and it’s a different story. But yeah, I think five to six weeks you can really notice. And that’s what I’ve noticed doing, getting back into strength training now since I haven’t been able to swim is, the things I was feeling so sore the first two to three weeks of the strength training, but now I’m not pulling up as sore and I’m noticing the change physically in how I feel particularly the strength through the core and through the hips and how I move and how I walk. And then in terms of posture and how you carry yourself like it, it really transfers to a lot of different aspects

of your life and my shoulder because I came off the mountain bike seven months ago and so I was having issues with it. Haven’t swam obviously much lately but my shoulder has improved dramatically. So I haven’t had any issues and that’s for surfing for like six or seven hours a day sometimes whereas before it was pulling up sore after two or three hours. So I’m looking forward to seeing how that goes when I get back in the water and swim but that strength training so far I’ve noticed has made a big difference. So I think that seems to be a real key to overcoming those sorts of injuries or issues.

Yeah, with the shoulders, it’s a, we talk about a ball and socket joint. It needs to be mobile. And again, some of the listeners may be familiar with fascia. So it’s quite a big turn now. It’s my fascia stretching and you’ve got those foam rollers and there’s a lot of benefits to that. With the game with the functional movements when you start to train all the muscles and the right sequences and then again, functionally you’ll see that the fascia actually starts to reorganize itself without having to do hectic and painful stretches. So it’s this, for those who love to do the stretcher that’s fine but also for those who aren’t maybe want to do, you spend hours stretching every week just simply moving it. It’s incredible how the body reorganizes itself and that gives a lot of mobility to the shoulder because if you’ve got tight fascia, as you know, it’s tight fascia, it’s really kind of limited mobility. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, and that’s, because I’ve done next to no mobility work lately, but just moving better and doing, like we’ve been doing a bit of stuff on the ground, like I’ve been taking some juniors through some strength training and we’ve been doing some lying on the floor on your chest and y-raises, the Y-W stuff, your chest off, bring your hands up above your head, bring them back and some movements like that and angels and demons as well, which is kind of where you start up here and bring your hands back behind your bum. A few different exercises like that as well. And I feel like that stuff is, it’s not a strain at all. It’s, you’re not working at the complete limit of your mobility, but you might be working at say 80% of it, but those sorts of movements and just doing them regularly for six weeks has made things so much, so much better. And one of the things that you do, or you talk quite a bit about in the course is core strength and squatting

and sort of, I guess that connection, that strength that you can have through the hips. You wanna talk a little bit about those sorts of functional movements and how they relate to swimming and how that can actually develop core strength. Cause I think now when you first mentioned, squatting is one of the best ways to develop core strength. I was like, I’ve never sort of heard that before, but the more you have sort of looked into it, it’s like, yeah, it’s one of the best things you can do for your core strength. Absolutely, and I mean, it’s so funny, he said, I just had a patient yesterday, he said, what are you talking about? And then I explained to them, I said, I can’t believe my tummy is, my core feels like I’ve done like a whole bunch of planking. And I said, yeah, it’s because you’re not connected. But for swimmers, that connection, the mobility in the hips and the core and that rotational component is just by doing the squatting technique correctly

or functioning, you actually open up low back. You get the core muscles to fire. And the core muscles, I mean, I talk about core, it’s talking about your abdominals here as well, but the core actually involves all your trunk, big trunk muscles. So your pec, your lats, your glutes, your hip flexes. So in terms of what a lot of people associate, core is would be the abdominals. But they’ve got to work together with the glutes, your buttocks muscles. And so it’s the squatting action when done correctly activates all those muscles beautifully. And it also has a tremendous effect on the whole spine, not just your lower back. And when that lower back and the back loosens up and you’ve got the mobility and when you’ve got the rotational freedom or improvements in mobility there, then you’ve got that better connection with the Serape effect and the whole sort of thing which you go through the core. So squatting is, yeah, I mean,

from a fat burning, from a metabolic efficiency to back improvements and backs, joint health, mobility, strength. I mean, I can have all podcasts just done squatting and we go through that in the course, it’s really, in fact, if the average person doesn’t like to exercise, just did those squats, they would see improvements in shoulder mobility and posture two, three weeks by doing that.

With some of the junior kids that I’ve been doing some strength work with some of them at the very beginning, they were squatting maybe that far down as in like from where the hips, they weren’t hardly squatting, right? And so you’re just not gonna get anything from it. And so it’s something that, you know, I see my young kids, they’re able to do the squatting, but I think a lot of times as you get a bit older, we just, you know, these kids aren’t old, they’re like 11 or 12, some of them. We just either forget or we just don’t do that movement and we don’t do it properly. And I know for me personally, like so tight through my hips. I’m good now, but I have been in the past so tight through my hips from sitting in the car for hours at a time or sitting at a desk and plus your hip flexors get tight. And so when I’ve been opened up by doing these exercises and sometimes a little bit of yoga as well, I find really useful.

It’s like, man, you can be so much stronger through the hips. And I’m looking forward to getting back in the pool tomorrow for my first swim back in the pool and just seeing how it feels with this better strength. Because I reckon for me it’s probably the strongest I’ve been through my core and through my hips in the last probably 12 or 13 years. And so I’m looking forward to seeing how that feels and how that relates to swimming in the water. Yeah, and the thing is, you know, we talked about core strength and I do shares in the videos, but is that we’ve got to get away from that sort of burning feeling that you get in the olden days of you used to lift your legs up in the air and do your thousand sit-ups to really feeling all the muscles work together. And that’s really where you get the power. And as I said, I’m not gonna really mention it, but squatting is a very, very powerful and functional. It’s a foundation to all of, if you look at tennis players

and they stand when they have to receive the tennis ball, how they stand, that squat position, karate, surfing, any snowboard, any sort of sport where even before you go into rugby into the scrum, they get into that position. It’s where I call the body’s power position. And I think in swimming, it’s hard, sometimes harder to see than a lot of other sports because like you can see obviously the hips are rotating a bit and it’s, but it’s really hard to sort of notice and understand that connection when you’re watching someone swim because it’s so, I guess it’s so sort of intricate, but if you look at someone say surfing or playing rugby, like with someone surfing, for example, if you look at it slowly, look at someone sort of generating speed, they’ll compress and then they’ll come up and it’s that movement through the hips and it’s really well timed with the feet and through the hips and so on. And it’s essentially the same sort of thing through swimming,

but it’s a lot easier to see in other sports that are land-based and I guess more obvious movements than swimming.

For the swimmers, what it is is that the squatting, when you talk about doing it properly, is it really unlocks the hips and the back and it provides that mobility and even swimming. And one of the key parts of the spine is in the middle back, just as the middle back goes into the lower back, you’ve got the rotational components and when that is very common locked or stiff in a lot of people and so what happens is your lower back then overworks and that’s where you go to Kairos or osteophysicists who then start to manipulate and release that tension. When you start to the squatting properly, you start to release that rotational, transitional area in the spine and that then connects the whole body. That’s where you get all this movement from. So you really see the benefits, the squatting made another direct effect on the swimming like you just clearly pointed out, but it’s that the release you get from doing squats

in the back that then translates to the swimming. Yeah, right, that’s interesting. And it’s, so you’re saying that, so that lower part of the back is often quite tight, quite compressed and so that’s gonna limit someone’s ability to generate that power. Yes, sir. Your lower back, as you described in the course, your lower back can’t actually rotate, so it doesn’t have the rotational component. It’s got to do with the orientation of the joints. So your lower back is designed for flexion extension, flexion extension. There is a little bit of rotation on what we call the L5S1, right at the bottom of the base of your spine, but most of the rotation takes place up higher up in the spine and there’s a transitional area where the spine goes from rotation to flexion extension and that’s often quite tight. And a lot of physios and carers work around trying to loosen it up, but I’ve discovered over the years by doing the squats,

that area loosens up quite quickly and that’s where the power comes because when that loosens up, then now your body can function correctly and then you’ve got connection, really. Yeah, right, that’s interesting. And for you, is there any sort of, any people that come to mind who have, let’s say, come to you, they’ve been really tight, they’ve had issues with either shoulder or lower back or knees, whatever it might be and they’ve practised this stuff for a number of weeks and they’ve been able to operate without pain and that sort of thing? Have you got any people who come to mind?

If it’s related to those physical limitations, absolutely, I’m actually quite surprised how quickly people will tell me how their mobility improves. We have this idea, you’ve mentioned five, six weeks and yes, it does take that time to build strength, but in terms of often even just releasing the back can be a day, a week, it’s quite very, very interesting to see how quickly it depends on the person and the issues, but it’s really, I’ve found, I’ve noticed on my own journey, I started off as a Pilates instructor and I couldn’t do the next level three Pilates because I didn’t have the mobility. I was quite frustrated because I was thinking, well, if I’m doing Pilates, I should be improving my mobility and I realized I moved away from Pilates about 10 years ago and started really looking into this functional and often just, even just simply squatting again, that sounds like I’m trying to promote the squat, but just squatting, my mobility radically improves

within a day or two, it doesn’t take, that’s the big thing about flexibility, it doesn’t need to be hours and hours and weeks and weeks of stretching. Once the right muscles work, you can improve flexibility quite quickly, which I think is really exciting for the average person, who doesn’t want to spend hours doing gym. And those who do do yoga and Pilates, it’s also, this is a compliment set because now they can go to their classes and do their stretching and really take shift to the next level. I think the people, those that are listening to this, they’re probably going to jump off the podcast and just start doing some squats for the help of it. And I know last time I had you on, I know last time I had you on and you talked a bit about the squat, I started doing squats where I hadn’t really done them for the years and so it’s a good thing but you want to make sure that you’re doing them right because I know people who have done them wrong

and for most of the time, it’s given them a bit of pain in the lower back by not doing it right or often pain in the knees as well. So you want to make sure that you’re doing that in the right way. So thanks very much for being on the podcast and so the course, I’ll put a link in the show notes for this and it’ll be on our website as well for the course and it’s a six week program that will take you through all the fundamental movements that you should be doing if you are doing any sort of swimming. And as we mentioned, it doesn’t need to take a lot of time.

A couple of minutes a day will make a big difference and if you are doing any sort of gym work then I’d highly recommend going through this course because just a way to make these movements much more functional and sort of all body movements that’s going to help you not have shoulder pain, gonna keep you in the water and allow you to just maintain that training without having to take big chunks of time out of the water.

Great. No, well, thanks for having me and look forward to the feedback from the guys who you did the course. Yeah, awesome. And those that are in our membership as well, you’re gonna be in there answering any questions that they’ve got. If anyone’s got specific issues, they can either contact you through your website or if they’re an effortless swimming member, then jump in the forum there and you’ll be in there helping out as well, which would be great. So thank you. Looking forward to it, Branson. 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.effortlesswimming.com.