Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Mark Evans, who has been the National USA Triathlon Coach and he’s also developed and designed multiple products, which he’s licensed to Speedo and they’ve sold hundreds of thousands of units over the last couple of decades. Now I met Mark on a triathlon camp five years ago and in that time we’ve actually been developing our own swim paddle. And we’ve finally got to the point where it is ready to manufacture. It’s called the M25 lift paddle. M25 after Mark’s design philosophy where when he used a product that he had designed, he knew within 25 meters whether or not he’d got it right. Hence the M25. Now the M25 lift paddle represents a significant advancement in swim paddle technology because it’s like driver assist but for your arm during the catch phase of the stroke.

Now we are launching this paddle. We’re releasing this paddle on Kickstarter because we need your help and your support to make this thing a reality. And whether or not you purchase one of these paddles, my only ask would be if you can share this with people that you know who swim, who are looking to improve their swimming. That would mean a lot to me. I’d love your help and support with this. Now the difference with the M25 lift paddle is it’s designed with a unique curved shape and strategically placed grooves and channels to enhance the water flow and create a more natural and efficient swimming motion. And this innovative design not only helps swimmers develop better technique but also reduces stress on the shoulders and improves overall performance. So I’ll put a link in the show notes and you can also go to effortlessswing.com forward slash paddle and that will take you to the Kickstarter page.

So if you listen to this, we’ve just released it on Kickstarter. So I’d love your support and your help. Thanks very much for your help and support over the last couple of years of listening to this podcast. Let’s get into the episode with Mark Evans. Here we are talking about the catch and what you can do to continue to improve your technique. And Mark is probably one of the most well researched and knowledgeable people on this topic. My guest today is someone who I had on the podcast eight years ago. It’s Mark Evans. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, Britain. Well, thinking back to our very first episode, you that episode was the most listened to episode that we’ve ever had. And I don’t know exactly why that was, but I have a good inclination of why people were interested in what you had to say because your background is national head coach for the US triathlon team. And your background with research and I think your interest in how people move, how you can get better and also just the amount of work that you’ve put into some of the books that you’ve published.

You’re a very deep well of knowledge for swimming and triathlon. So I think that’s probably why it was one of the most listened to episode or the most listened to episode we’ve ever had. So that’s why I want to get you back on the podcast, but also also want to announce what we’ve been working on for quite a few years now. Which is the M25 lift paddle and people who are listening to this will have heard me reference it now and then about the paddle that we’ve been working on getting made. And this is something that you’ve had in the works for a long time. And we finally got it to the point where it can now be manufactured. So we’ll talk about that on this episode. And I also want to talk about the catch and get into some details on that and how people can improve their catch and swim faster. So that’s what I want to get into today. Great. Good stuff. Now for those listening in a couple of sentences, how would you sum up your background and your experience in triathlon and swimming?

And I know we go back a long way there, but how would you summarize it? And specifically related to swimming or in triathlon? Triathlon as well. Well, yeah, it’s a long story, but I started being aware of triathlon in 1981. And I don’t think there had been 30 people or 40 people maybe that had done an Ironman. And there were some of us that were doing marathons and cycling and things like that. I swam as a young person, but it just caught my attention for some reason. And within two or three years, I decided that I wanted to be a coach. It was the completely unscripted thing that happened. And I remember being fortunate enough to have enough knowledge, if you will. I spent my time in libraries and in University of California, Berkeley and their sports science labs because no one knew anything about this stuff. And maybe Dave Scott. Dave Scott had an exercise physiology degree, so he was quite impressive.

But I felt like I needed to know as much as possible about how to teach, coach. And it’s not just like writing workouts and things like that. You have to be able to teach people. And in order to do that, you have to understand the physiology and what kind of goals you’re trying to accomplish. And it really just kind of started with that. That was kind of my nature from the beginning. It was just my nature. It’s so funny. I still have the very first workout that I ever wrote by hand. Can you get what it is? It’s crazy. It was like, because I thought, okay, three sports, seven days, 21 workouts possible. Dry land, weight training, nutrition, psychology. All of these things. And it started just because if you don’t look at those things, you’re kind of not really coaching me. Because they all come up. But yeah, it was handwritten. But it looked like an Excel spreadsheet before they had Excel spreadsheets. It was just handwritten.

And that was kind of the basis of it. But very quickly, within a few years, I started getting more and more complicated. And then technology came in. And I remember Scott Molina telling me one time, because he was from the same area. He was becoming quite a notable triathlete, obviously. It was one of the greatest. But he said, you know, Mark, you have to be as good at coaching each sport as possible. So I just took that to heart. It was like a dog chasing a stick. It was just like, oh, he’s right. I need to do that. I can’t just be a swimming coach. I’ve got to learn how to do dry land stretching, mobility, stability, swimming, biking, running, all of these things. I’ve got to know how to fit bikes. I have to know how to deal with psychology issues, nutritional issues. You know, I have to know everything. And as much as I could. And so that was kind of the fun part for me. I really just enjoyed doing that.

And your latest book, which was a couple of years ago now, Triathletes in Motion. So that is a very detailed deep dive into how to move, how to strengthen yourself for the different different sports. And when we were talking before, you were saying that was like three years of four to six hours a day of research and writing for three years. And you put that all into this into this. So your understanding of all this stuff is it’s got to be the top couple. You know, top few people in the world with all of this. And that’s what appealed to me when we first started chatting in 2015, because we met at a camp in 2014, very briefly, but we got chatting there. And then we continued to interact after that. So in 2015, I got talking and eventually we decided to, well, you had some products in the pipeline. Previously, you had designed products which Speedo had actually taken on board and had sold hundreds of thousands, if not millions of these products that you designed and they patented.

You had some products that you had been working on that just hadn’t been able to get them to market yet, because what we now know is that they’re quite unique or they’re very unique. They take a different way of manufacturing compared to what’s out there at the moment. And it just hasn’t been easy to find the people to be able to get these things to become reality. But we’ve finally done that now. So just in terms of that, so with your thoughts on designing products, how do you think about it? Because you’ve got a very unique way of approaching it, and some of the stuff that you’ve come up with is very unique and different to what I’ve seen. 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 now get the goggles and you have one-year membership included for free. And if you’d like to continue with the membership going forward, it’s only $15 US dollars a month, where you get access to their workouts, training plans, and custom workout builder. But you’ll always have access to the real-time data in the goggles, so you never lose access to that. My favorite thing about the Form Goggles is having the instant feedback of what times you’re doing, what stroke rate you’re doing, and also the ability to see what your heart rate is. Because never before have we been able to have these immediate feedback heads-up display where it’s actually telling you what your intervals are. So when I wear the goggles in training, I like that I know my split for the first 50 and the 100 and the 150. So every single lap I’m getting that feedback on what my pace is.

And I find it’s such an important tool for being able to not only have different gears where you 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 save 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. Well, I appreciate the comments on the book.

First of all, it was a lengthy process and it really is a culmination of those almost 30 years of coaching that last book. And I will say to your viewers, I apologize for the first chapter in advance. It’s way too sports scientific like, but the rest of the chapters are about movement, mobility, stability, how to train technique. And the reason I’m mentioning this is because all of that knowledge in there and there are some coaches that I do hear from that use utilize it. But they are kind of what I refer to as fundamentals, like kind of basic things that you can rely upon to help yourself become more efficient. And but that knowledge and all the work forms the basis of all the products that we have. I have designed and together with you and have doing testing with them forms the fundamental basis for designing those products. And to be quite frank, the designing of the products is easier when you know the motions that the body makes in order to achieve those motions.

And in swimming, for example, it’s very clear. I mean, there are fundamentals in swimming for sure. But if we’re just talking about the catch, it’s and the high elbow catch is. And I’ll liken this to golf, for example, you know, you got the golf ball, you got the club face and all good golf shots meet at that same point. It’s a fundamental. Now, people get there differently. They swing differently. They have different grips. But at the end of the day, they are all at just that moment before impact or at the very same position at the professional level. Take that over to swimming. The high elbow catch is the same fundamental. You will see different recoveries, different entries. You’ll see a lot of those variations. You’ll see a six-speed, a two-beat kick, you know, depending upon things. But you will see in just about, well, you will see in every one of those athletes a high elbow catch. And the other. So what gets the high elbow catch?

It is perhaps just an kind of innate learning of what is optimal positions through years and years of training. It’s almost like an evolution. You know, they evolve into better, more efficient swimmers. But what is it that they’re doing? Is they’re internally rotating the shoulder. So if I hold my hand and I internally rotate, I’m not moving my hand. I’m not moving the elbow, but I’m simply internally rotating. There’s your high elbow catch. And so those are the kind of the fundamentals that we worked on. And I could talk a little bit more about, you know, paddle wheels and principles of lift and things like that. But that’s kind of the basis of it. It is a fundamental. A high elbow catch is absolutely fundamental in order to become a better swimmer. It’s the same thing as golf or tennis. You know, you need to hit the ball square. And that catch, I think, is quite elusive for many people. And it doesn’t come easy.

You’ve got to have a lot of practice with it. You’ve got to know what you’re doing and you need to make sure you’re not overdoing some of these concepts as well. And what I mean by that is that when people talk about internal rotation of the shoulder, I think sometimes that gets overdone or misinterpreted where they’re like rolling their shoulder forwards and they’re in a position where they’re putting way too slow through the front of their shoulder. Absolutely. And another way that this can get misinterpreted to is high elbow catches. Your elbow should be high in the water. But it’s more like an elbow forwards position. I think it’s sometimes a better way to describe it. So there’s all these different things that people hear and then they try and do without much guidance or coaching. And it can actually make them either slower or get injured. So I think it’s good to know exactly what you should be doing and what you are currently doing at the moment.

So with that in mind, how would you go about getting someone who’s pulling with a straight arm? For example, there’s no high elbow catch. They might be dropping the elbow. How would you go about getting them to work towards that optimum position? Well, I think another fundamental is, and I really kind of looked at that, but I mean, probably the greatest drill is a single arm catch. You know, with the catch up, kind of a catch up stroke, where you’re taking one or two, like three strokes with the right arm, three strokes with the left. And if you look at that, nine out of ten or whatever people that do that, it does a couple of things. It shifts your center of mass forward by being what is referred to as the front quadrant. It actually shifts your buoyancy forward so it elevates your body, which is streamlining is a fundamental. But to your question, how do you teach it? We used to use a stick, you know, a small dowel in the hand and then we would hold

and then you’d make one arm and then exchange. So it forces you to be in that catch up position. But if you’ll notice, once you start the pole or the hold rather, I like to refer to it, is you’ll see immediately your elbow is high. Because you’re in the quadrant, your buoyancy is forward and you’re able to be more economical. And it causes a curvilinear path or a small oblique change in the angle of attack and so you’re not pushing water straight back, which is what you do. You mention straight arm pole, that’s probably for neophyte beginning swimmers or people that are learning how to swim as an adult, it takes so much time. And, you know, like in my book, I break down these tedious repetitions of specific postures and positions. And most people will probably not, it’s like stretching. People just don’t want to do it. They’d rather go ride their bike or something. But, you know, if you practice these things with deliberate intention

and do it over and over and over again, eventually you’re going to get that feel. And as an adult swimmer, and maybe in particularly triathletes, they could really have tremendous improvement if they practice repeating movements that are more economical. And they need to get in the water more. You’re not going to improve two or three days a week, you know, in my opinion. You know, you need, like I took this one swimmer, this one triathlete female, believe it or not, she hadn’t swam much, maybe five years ago. And I had her doing, I said, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to, we’re really going to put you into some volume. And I eventually got her into like 23, 24,000 meters a week. Well, that build up, and that didn’t happen over the course of weeks, but it happened. And, oh my gosh, the changes that it made in her feel for the water was tremendous. And her results were just tremendous. So combining really good technique with volume, I think, is super important.

But practice, deliberate practice. Yeah, that’s it. It doesn’t come from just watching videos or thinking about your cats. It comes from that deliberate practice. You need to put in there in the time. But it’s really helpful. It’s very helpful to have like video or your eyes or someone’s eyes that really know fundamentals. And then you said about a deliberate path. I mean, I’ve seen it work so often, but I’ve also seen, you know, I’ve seen people in the water, they swim the same workout every day. They never change it. They never do any non-freestyle. Like backstroke is an amazing way to learn freestyle. Because it’s basically upside down freestyle. It’s the same catch position, isn’t it? It’s exactly the same catch position. And, you know, I heard one of your podcasts or saw a clip of it on Instagram. And you were talking about a diamond shape. And I says, well, yeah, that’s the shape you want when you’re doing backstroke.

And it’s that high, it’s a high elbow catch, but you’re upside down. And if you think of it as a diamond shape like you do when you’re, you know, when you’re, when you’re doing freestyle, it’s an even breaststroke. All of them that are the same as far as I’m concerned, you know, they’re all the same high elbow. They’re exactly the same. All, all the strokes. So they should be doing multiple strokes. And, you know, a lot of people, and I’m kind of shifting here, but a lot of people struggle with how to coordinate their legs with the movement of the arms. So vertical, vertical kicking, I think is an amazing tool for swimmers. And especially adult learn to swim. It’s those fundamentals. And it’s not like I’m trying to make up stuff and sound like these are magic answers. They’re just fundamentals. You look at what the fundamentals are and the elite swimmers. And, you know, the work I’ve done with, with my, one of my co-authors, Jane, Jane Kaepert,

she was, she and I worked at the Olympic Training Center, Olympic International Center for Aquatic Research, worked together there. You know, it’s pretty straightforward what the science is. That’s why I like science. You know, science is pretty clear about what it does, but it also has always this potential for change. You know, it always, always has this, but there are certain, you know, formulas and fundamentals like streamlining, high elbow catch. One of the things I was kind of just thinking earlier today, because I knew we were going to do this, like, you know, how do you, I mean, one of the things I’m not an expert on is how much breath holding and exhalation you do off of your turn. So this is the crazy thought that came in my mind, but there are probably fundamentals in that too that I haven’t really thought about. But, you know, using fundamentals, knowing what the mobility stability, like mobility stability, flexibility of each client,

which is the foundation of those books. It’s like, if you tell somebody to do something and they’re, you know, chest are tight or their hips are tight or their piriformis is tight or their hamstrings or something, they’re not going to be able to do it. So you need to screen. You need to screen for movement, I think. That’s where physical therapists are such a great tool for coaches. I mean, if you have someone that has motion movement limiters or strength limiters, and we have screens in the books, you know, extensive stuff, you know, and again, apologize for chapter one, but it’s there. And, you know, if an athlete really wants to get super good, great physical therapist, get yourself musculoskeletal, pay attention to your movement stability, flexibility, and then have coaches help you with, like yourself, with the fundamentals of what you’re trying to achieve. And if you’ve got greater range of motion,

then it’s going to be easy to achieve some of these positions. So there’s no reason why you can’t get better at that. And a lot of people might feel like they’re very tight through the shoulders from sitting at a desk in the car or same with the, with the ankles as well, but you can improve, you can get better. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean it happens easily. It takes time and it takes consistency with that stuff, but you can get better at it. And then combine that with learning the right technique. That’s how you can, and then combine that with the volume, combine that with the consistency. And a lot of the swimmers that I’ve worked with through my online coaching, who send me videos regularly, a lot of those that have done even just a couple of weeks of more, more sessions, more volume, that has fast-tracked their progress a lot. And because they just start to figure things out, they get that, that feel for the water.

And they’re probably, you know, they’re doing twice as many repetitions, twice as many strokes within that, say, forward. And there’s also this, you know, the physiological adaptations are super beneficial. You know, more mitochondrial, more, you know, fatty acid, you know, all these things are kind of developing with a little more volume. And it doesn’t have to be hard volume. You know, it just, there just needs to be volume. And you know, we used to, and I know, I know you’re probably doing that as well. I mean, like open water swimming and long-course 50-meter pool swimming and, you know, those kinds of things are just super, super helpful, especially for swimming. And I think, you know, pretty much, you know, you can swim a lot of distance and your body can tolerate that versus running, of course. You know, running is a, you know, a little different, difficult, you know, discipline for sure on the body. But, you know, there are ways to, you know,

mitigate injuries and overuse stuff with all of the sports. But you need to count, you know, it’s like there’s no one clear answer, but it is mobility, stability, flexibility, technique, volume, proper dosage of intensities, proper dosage of volumes. Those are the easy things to kind of figure out. In fact, it’s interesting, you know, most of the top-level pros, they’re pretty much following similar plans. You know, and there’s obviously genetics and all these kinds of things. There’s no real magic bullets. But if the magic bullets are in fundamentals, what makes that golf ball go is center face, what makes that swimmer go high elbow cat? If you can’t get there, mobility, stability, flexibility, or you’re just training it improper. Like you say, you probably see a lot of people pulling straight arm. I put them in the front quadrant that goes away. But they have to do it over and over and over again. One of the things that some of the feedback I got from a swimmer

who had been to a clinic up in Sydney with our coach Mitch there, he said, this was really interesting because he said, Mitch told him that when you change what you’re doing with your catch, it’s actually going to feel like you’re holding less water. Now the reason for that was this swimmer was pushing down with a straight arm, putting a lot of power into the catch. So he’s feeling like he’s holding a lot of water, but it’s moving in the wrong direction. He’s using the wrong muscles and he’s doing it the wrong way. So when he improved it, for him it actually felt like he was applying less force and like he was holding less water because of what he was doing prior to that. So that to me is quite an interesting concept because so many people are just pushing, pushing straight down on the water. So it’s going to feel very different. I got a great, great thing that we learned at the Olympics on Jane Kappert, our partner did,

is that the gold medalists are actually utilizing less force than everybody else. So they’re more efficient, which is exactly what you’re talking about. And anybody that pulls in a straight arm, I used to love this diagram that I would write, I had a window on our swimming flume and I would use a dry marker. If you’re pushing down, straight down, so every time that hand moves to a new position, the resulting forces go in the opposite way. And you really want to be having your forces moving forward and the high elbow is putting you in that forward motion. So I mean, you’ve probably heard the analogy is if you’re reaching up and you’re pulling yourself up over a ladder, you know, look at that high elbow. I mean, it’s just natural. But if you’re just climbing a ladder, you’re going to do that high elbow every time. You’re not going to climb that ladder with a straight arm, but it’s a very common thing. And I imagine you, I’m guessing,

I mean, you’ve coached thousands of people. So, and I was different coach too. I was doing mostly one-on-ones for years. I mean, years and years of one-on-ones. Thousands of swim, bike, run lessons. And that was my requirement. I said, look, if you want to be coached, we’ve got to do six or eight hours together. And those were very helpful to them and to me. And you say, look, you know, if you’re going to pull straight arm, the forces are going to go in the opposite direction of us wanting to go in that direction. So your guys are absolutely right there. I use that cue of the ladder quite often because people who are new to the sport will, they’ll be trying to do their catch and pull as moving their arm through the water in what they think is the right shapes. So they’re just trying to pull their arm through and just move it through. But if you, the goal is to try and place that handed forearm in the water and almost anchor yourself there and the body moves past it.

That’s what we’re working towards. It’s a whole ladder below you. You place it on the run and then you are moving to the next one and you just, your body’s just… I almost, I almost, I’ve actually, I think I write about this a little bit, but I don’t like the word pull. I think it’s wrong. It’s a hold. The elite swimmer puts their hand in a point and it comes out ahead of that point. A neophyte swimmer puts their hand in the water and it comes out by their hip. The elite swimmer is actually holding water and they’re scrolling, small ways of scrolling. They’re changing their angle of attack and it’s very little going, I don’t know if I mentioned this kickboard technique. Did I talk about that?