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 this week’s episode of the Effortless Swimming podcast. I want to start this episode off by telling you a story about how I accidentally joined a search party looking for myself. It was 10 years ago and a friend of mine and an athlete that I was coaching at the time, Matt, he was training for the English Channel. And I wanted to help him out and also get a bit of experience in the cold water by joining him for some of his open water swims, where he had to get adapted to the cold. So myself, Matt and another friend of ours, Wendy, we went for a swim in the Bay in Melbourne. And we left from this place called the Brighton Bars. Now, if you don’t know what the Brighton Bars are, it’s kind of like a gym, which has got showers, steam room. And they’ve also got this pier that goes out and around. So it’s this sort of closed, closed square pier that you can you can swim in there that’s protected from

any boats or anything like that. So you can kind of do laps in this pier. But in the corner of this pier, you have got this fence that runs around it, this metal wire fence, but there’s a gap in the fence. So if you want to go out and swim further out, go around the poles that are nearby, go a bit longer, you can go out through this little gap in the fence. So we go to the Brighton Bars, we’re all changed, it’s about 10 degrees Celsius in the water, it’s the middle of winter, it’s bloody freezing. And we all go out just in our swimmers in our bathers. So we’re not wearing wetsuits. Now, I’m not great in the cold. And Wendy and Matt knew this, but I’m strong swimmer, I’m comfortable out there. And I kind of know I know my limits. So we head out there, we swim out to the second pole. So this is probably 600 meters to 800 meters away. We get out there and then we stop and we all decide, all right, let’s swim to the pole that’s

closest to the Brighton Bars. So we all stop there and then I’m starting to get a little bit cold. And I said to them, all right, I’m getting a bit cold, I’m going to head in on this one. And so they decided, all right, we’ll head in as well. Because it was windy, it was choppy. There wasn’t very good visuals because there was quite a bit of swell and chop. So you couldn’t really see further than a couple of meters around you, aside from being able to see the Brighton Bars. So with other swimmers, you couldn’t really see where they were. So we start heading in towards the Brighton Bars. So it’s about 200 meters between the pole and the bars. And we start swimming in and then I’m swimming for 60, 70 meters. And I realize I can’t see Matt and Wendy around me. I stop and I look around and I can’t see them. I’ve kind of got ahead in because I’m getting really cold here. So I don’t want to be caught out here in my

behaviors. It’s 10 degrees in the water and I’m just going to get too cold if I stick around. So I just keep swimming in towards where the pier is and I duck in through the gap and make my way back to land. And I grab my towel and I’m looking out and I can see that Matt and Wendy are swimming around near where this pole is about 200 meters from the shore. And I thought that’s weird. I thought we decided to swim in together and call it a day. But they are still out there and I thought maybe they just decided that they want to keep on going. I was really cold at this point. I was really starting to get to my core. So I just headed in towards the showers and I started getting changed, having a shower and warming up and just thought, OK, well, if they want to keep swimming, no worries. I’ll just get changed while they’re doing that. Then I come back out after getting changed in the lifeguard who’s there and the people on the

front desk there. They’ve got this worried look on their face. And this is a bit weird. What’s going on? And I ask them what’s happening. And they said, oh, yeah, some swimmers are out there and they they run into another swimmer out there that had a red cap on. And he was in trouble and now they can’t find him. Oh, geez, OK, that’s that’s weird. I didn’t know there was anyone else out there. I didn’t really see anyone when we were swimming, but OK, so that that makes sense why they’re out there. They’re looking for this swimmer in the red cap. This episode of the podcast is proudly brought to you by our sponsor, Form Smart Swim Goggles. They’re more than a pair of goggles. Meet the world’s most powerful swim platform. See yourself improve with Form Smart Swim Goggles, including a free one year membership when you purchase your goggles for only $249 US dollars. They’ve currently changed up their offer where you can

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can switch between the different speeds that you want to swim, but it helps you develop those gears and it helps you intuitively know how fast you need to go before you’re going to blow up or before you’re going to go a little bit too hard. So it helps you just get really good at judging your pace for when you do go to a race. And even if you’re not wearing the goggles in a race, it’s that intuition and that ability to develop your pacing that these goggles can really help with. To get your pair of Form Goggles and say 15% off, use our link formswim.com forward slash effortless or use the coupon effortless at checkout and that will get you 15% off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless or the code effortless at checkout. And they had come in while I was in the shower, Matt and Wendy had come in to the sort of front desk they’d run down the pier and told them we’ve lost it. We’ve lost a

swimmer out there or there’s a swimmer that we can’t find. They called triple zero, which is our emergency response number and we need to get the ambulance here. We might need to get the police here. So let’s just let them know what’s going on. And so I’m just going, OK, this is really, really strange. So I’m waiting there and I can see Matt and Wendy are out in the water and there’s the swimming round just kind of swimming in circles looking for this swimmer, obviously. And then the police arrive and the people on the front desk relay what’s going on. And I’m just sort of watching this unfold and I can’t get back in the water because I was just getting too, too cold. So I didn’t get a chance to chat to Matt and Wendy. And then the ambulance arrives and then we also see this fire truck arrive and I start and then I start to see these emergency rescue divers arrive as well. And this is pretty, this is pretty serious. This is a big

rescue and seeing everything swing to action here. So then I see Wendy hop out at the end of the pier. She climbs out of the water and she’s running down the pier and then she grabs this kayak that was off to the side and she grabs a kayak and heads out immediately. So I didn’t get a chance to wave her down and go and chat to her to go and ask her what’s going on here? Like who did you see out there that needs rescuing that you couldn’t find? Now I talked about the swimmer in the red cap that was lost out there. I was wearing a maroon cap and it didn’t click that that could possibly be seen as a red cap. So I was kind of standing in the gym area. She was running down the pier. She grabs this kayak and takes it out and is immediately paddling around. And now as she was paddling out there’s this helicopter that comes overhead and it’s starting to look around the water and it’s starting to hover over where we were swimming and

around the pier. Obviously looking for this swimmer that had been lost. And in the meantime I’m chatting to the policemen. I’m just saying yeah I was out there swimming with them. I didn’t see a swimmer but you know I’m guessing that they they did. So the whole time I’m chatting to the to the policemen and letting them that I don’t know any more than than they do really. And then this all all of this from the point that we got that I that I was lost out there to to this point it’s about 45 minutes. And so I walk out to the end of the pier and Wendy is probably 50 meters away and she’s looking up from this kayak and she squints her eyes and she looks up at me and she starts to paddle over and she sees me standing there on the pier. And I see her head drop down and she goes oh no. And I’m like what what are you talking about? And she goes we’re looking for you. I thought oh my god. This is this is bad. How on earth? All right well first

of all I’ve got to go and tell the policemen that I’m the one that they’re looking for the policemen I’ve been chatting to for the last half an hour. And so I go over to him and I say I just spoke to Wendy she said that they were looking for me and he’s like what are you talking about? Are you sure? Are you sure that you’re looking for? And I said yeah like and so Wendy came over and started chatting to the policemen and they realized that it was just a case of miscommunication and missed timing with us not seeing each other when they had come in and I was I was there. So the policemen then wraps it all up and the helicopter goes home the rescue divers pack up the fire trucks go home the ambulance goes home and we go back to the well and then Matt as well comes in and he was going through in his head like oh man what am I going to tell Brent’s parents? What am I what am I going to say to them? Like I feel responsible for

this because I’m the one training for the channel and you know I invited him to this swim and I feel like it’s my fault that this has happened and so he’s been he’s been stressing for the last 45 minutes thinking that that I’ll somehow passed away and he’s got to tell my parents something so he was he was just explaining all this to me and then we just go to the the steam room to to warm up because by this point they are freezing cold and he’s yeah he’s been out there on the kayak in really really cold weather and windy weather just just looking for me but having to put up with the with the cold because you know what else are you going to do so we’re sitting there and then these two these two older guys are kind of having a bit of a a go at us because of everything that’s happened and you know we just what have we got to say you know it’s like yeah that was like I don’t know how that happened that we’re just kind of

looking back on man how do we miss this? So long story short Matt ended up training for the channel made it he was the fastest Australian swimmer that year in 2013 and but that was that was the last open water cold water swim that I did with him at that time and in hindsight I can see where I could have we could have done a lot better just in terms of communication and communication out there and planning things better so that all these emergency services didn’t have to get involved and it was really embarrassing as well to like to be the reason all of this stuff had to get called out but you know thankfully obviously nothing nothing happened but it was still still quite embarrassing for all of that to to go down when it was just a case of miscommunication but the reason I tell this story is because quite often when we’re in the middle of things it’s hard to see the forest from the trees and often there’s a really obvious answer that’s in front

of us for the questions that we’re that we’re wanting to answer and the problems we’re wanting to to solve so I was thinking of that with my swimming at the moment it’s like where where are the obvious things what am I what am I not seeing here that if I just looked at things a little bit differently where where the opportunities there and so for me that was number one strength so I’ve been going to Kaiser gyms for I think about 18 months now and we do some testing there with you know strength testing and there’s quite a few areas where I’m like I’m fairly fairly weak so you do this back strength test and I’m in the I was in the lowest like bottom 10 percent of of back strength and I’ve had a lot of back issues over the last couple of years and it’s only been the last sort of 12 months where I’ve actually started to work on this where my back strength has improved dramatically and it’s been about 12 months since I last

hurt my back essentially so that was a really obvious one where I kept injuring my back but it was because my my back and core strength was no I knew what it should be but it was just kind of staring me in the face and it wasn’t until I addressed it that I was actually able to to improve it and so and the other one that that’s really clear too is with this EO swim better the the devices where you can measure your your force and the direction of that force I’ve got a I’m pretty low with the propulsive forces so those forces that are moving me forwards it’s around 37 percent I think which is just too low really it should be ideally we kind of want it to be above 50 and I’ve seen Roland Scuman he’s he’s pulling numbers like 70 or 77 percent propulsive forces so to me that’s that’s a really obvious answer as to what I should focus on is focusing on a better catch and pull so where more of those forces are going backwards towards my feet

rather than in a downwards direction towards the floor towards the ground so there’s a few things that when I just sort of sat back analyze that looked at it a little differently what are those those things that are just staring me in the face so my question to you is is there something like that in your in your swimming or in your life that is an obvious answer that you just haven’t been able to see because when we’re in the thick of things it can be hard to to realize those so I’ll wrap up the podcast there thanks for listening to it and next time you’re going cold water swimming with someone don’t make the mistake I did and not be clear with your communication because that was not a not a fun experience to go through but we certainly learned a lesson there and often it’s experiences like that where you can really take a lot from and if you but if you can kind of fast track that process by not having to go through it

and learning the lesson from someone else well that’s always a a benefit and a bonus so thanks for listening to this episode I’ll see you next week with another episode if you did enjoy it and you’re listening on Spotify or Apple podcast one thing I’d ask you to do is leave a review and if you know someone who’s looking to improve their swimming pass on this episode share it with them that’s all I ask thanks very much listening to the podcast see you next week