And ultimately, through my years working with swimming, it always comes down to fundamentals. What are they fundamentally doing correctly? And that needs to be in place first. 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.

Welcome to episode 138 of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Ryan Hodeon, who is the biomechanist for EnSwiss, which is a New South Wales Institute of Sport. And the the title for this episode is high level biomechanics for weekend warriors. So Ryan, you work with a very high level of swimmer. And what I want to chat today about is everything that you do with with those top level guys, but how people who are maybe trying for triathlon or swimming, they might be swimming two or three times a week. How can they apply some of this stuff that that you work on to their own swimming? So first of all, welcome to the podcast and thanks for joining me. Yeah, great to thanks for having me on. And the way that we got introduced was we’re both advisors for a company called Sensari, which are developing a pretty cool sort of power, not power meter, but a device that measures the force and the direction of the force

for swimmers. And so that’s how we got introduced. And we’ve both had the chance to test that stuff out. And there’s some pretty cool stuff that’s that’s coming out of that. And what were your thoughts on the on the device and how do you see it being used?

Yeah, well, I’ve obviously showed a lot of interest in the device to sort off with, and I know there are means of obviously extrapolating similar types of information from other devices. But this device just seems to kind of hit home to me because that obviously spent a heap of time through a phase of R and D to produce something out the back end that would make a difference to swimming. So just looking at it in the way they’re actually displaying a lot of the information of the output that was coming from the actual press sensors on the hand, it just made sense to me. So yeah, we show keen interest in that, obviously trying to push it more to not necessarily just routine use like a high crack monitor, but ultimately trying to, you know, jazz up the device that it’s actually going to give us more worth or more direct output of force during swimming as well. And how have you seen your job change over time with the use of technology?

And because obviously there’s so much data that we can get these days and how do you how do you simplify it to make it useful and to be able to obviously communicate that as well to the swimmers and the coaches? Yeah, great question. And yeah, that’s something we always kind of grapple with on a daily basis from our end, because there is just so much out there. And in our day and age, obviously, we’re at the mercy of all the technology that comes up and often there is so much. I mean, if you could almost relate it back to the types of apps that you have on your device, everything sounds great until you download the thing and then you find it’s actually worthless or that there might be potentially a better one out there. But you end up downloading all these things and trying to work it out from there. That’s ultimately what we do with a lot of the stuff that comes out, in particular to obviously the discipline we’re in by mechanics

and the different fields of analysis would do there. And in this case, I mean, more pertinent to swimming. There are a lot of stuff, a lot of devices that come out that, you know, especially, you know, equipment and paddles, fins, kickboards, all that type of thing, you know, the change and people seem to think that they’re going to reinvent swimming. So we technically become, you know, the gatekeepers of those things and really need to look into it, you know, in greater depth to understand actually what what that device is

and value that device is going to potentially add or whether it just is a gimmick and we don’t need to look in that direction at all. That’s ultimately what we’re doing almost on a daily basis. We’re also looking for kind of new and great ideas out there. And we kind of look towards I’m sorry to say, OK, well, that definitely is something we could make better use of down the track. Once we start understanding the outputs that they are delivering and, you know, we we obviously go through a whole process of validation as well to ultimately make sure that whatever those devices are putting out is valid and accurate and replicable of periods of time. And that’s ultimately what we do because at our level, I mean, if a thing is changing and shifting from one day to the next, we lose that trust and that trust relationship with coach and athlete the highest level is crucial to obviously the impact we have as scientists

and to the relationship and overall performance at the end of the day, too.

And what do you what do you do to how do you prefer to communicate with with the swimmer and the coach? You’re working with them together and are you are you using video? Is it just through just through constant communication like seeing them on a daily basis? What’s how does that typically look for you? Yeah, so at the high level, generally, a lot of my interaction with programs or with different squads or athletes and coaches is scheduled in upfront. And so it’s not very ad hoc at all. It’s it’s definitely planned into the schedule. So it would be the rest of the service providers in a team and a high performance team, which include the physiologists, the nutritionists, you know, strength conditioning, physiotherapy, all of that type of stuff. All of them are included in a plan right at the beginning of the season. And obviously, you know, interaction with us ebbs and flows over a period of time. And from one athlete to the next, they have different interactions

with different specialists at different times as well. And that’s all kind of guided or led by the coach, I would say. And all specifically around that particular athlete. And then, you know, as time progresses, we obviously ensure that we progressing in the right direction and through a lot of the stuff that we do, if we’re adjusting technique, I mean, you’d know very well in this regard, if you’re adjusting technique quite often you you expect regression to start off with. So people potentially get slower or feel a little more awkward in the pool but just doesn’t feel quite right. But through persistence, we hope to take, you know, those two steps forward following that one step back. So that’s ultimately what we try to do over a period of time. And then if we look at some high performance programs that I’m dealing with, ultimately, my interaction is through the coach and he directs obviously the service I provide.

But when it when it gets to, you know, the nitty gritty and right at the crux in my involvement with the athlete in that connection is very, very close. And I ultimately need to understand what they’re trying to do and how they feel or think about whatever they’re trying to do and refine that in a way that is going to make them better. And this is really looking for marginal gains. And that’s where that trust comes in again, as I mentioned earlier on, because now we’re talking about things that are very groundbreaking. It’s things that potentially haven’t been seen before and all that type of thing. And if we go back a few steps and consider age group development, swimming or your average Joe, I’m just trying to get better. Often you can take quite a blanket approach on things and conform to a certain norm that at our level, dealing at the highest level, the best are always doing something different. And we trying to obviously make better use of that difference

to to get more out of them. And is there something that comes to mind when you think of something that’s that’s groundbreaking? Is there something over the last couple of years that you may have thought differently about in the past and you’ve you’ve looked at it and studied it further and gone? Oh, actually, this is this is how it is. Yeah, for sure. The kind of well, you know, probably a few things I can think of. But over a period of time, my biggest realization and you find it quite strange, I mean, I do with technology at very different levels. And, you know, we have, you know, just out of the art and devices that we use, you know, measuring an outgoing velocity, measuring, you know, you know, acceleration in different directions on on the summer wearing like I’m use. Yeah, we just there is just so much information we can get from athletes and all of that. We also use like kind of 2D 2D motion capture where we actually calibrate to certain space

and can actually give you an indication as to, you know, kick frequencies, kick amplitude and on what kicks different metrics and stroke to. And we could look at all of that in massive depth. But in the end of the day, it’s how you interpret that information that’s key. And I find a really happy space with dealing with information and sharing the information that I feel is going to make the most impact to athlete and coach. And that’s probably the space I kind of like dealing in.

And ultimately, through my years working with swimming,

it always comes down to fundamentals. What are they fundamentally doing correctly? And that needs to be in place first. And I mean, obviously, the audience from your view, I think, you know, it’s it’s quite easy to kind of get caught up in what everyone else is doing. And the guy in the lane next to you might be doing something which you think might better suit you or it just looks great because his swimming five minutes quicker over is, you know, his initial swim in a triathlon that you must be doing what he’s doing. But ultimately, we just need to go back to consider what we’re doing. Well, first, what got us there in the first place and then ensure that we have all those fundamentals in place that we can build off of those to obviously get better or more out of what we’re trying to do in the end of the day. Yeah, that’s that’s something that I’ve come to learn over the last 12 years of coaching is it’s there’s so many different ways to do every single stroke.

And so you want to work with the strengths of each swimmer and work with all the things that they’ve got in your different heights, different wingspans, just different different strengths within their stroke and and tailoring it that way. It’s and like similar to you, we work with a lot of different swimmers and just seeing that wide range of that wide range of of styles. And then there’s so much there’s so much sort of knowledge there or so much data, I guess, to to interpret and then to be able to interpret that and give them the the advice that you think will be best for that swimmer based on what you’ve seen in the past. That I do you find that sort of like the art of of what you do? Oh, no, definitely. So you hit the nail on the head there and that ultimately is what comes down to so we we scientists and we think in a very scientific way. And we love information. We love, you know, very complex graphs and very complex information.

But ultimately, that makes no sense to the athlete, right? If you tell him to move his arm or his leg at two degrees different, then it’s going to make that impact. He’s going to look at you with a frown on his face. With some some swimmer’s mind, you probably go to that extent and want that level of detail. But ultimately, they’re not wanting you to be that specific. They’re wanting you to give more of an overarching idea as to what they need to do better and how they could potentially do it and what the potential outcomes going to be as well. So in that, we often deal with heats of information. And sometimes that information, you know, is going to prove to us that what they’re doing is is totally incorrect and they need to change stratically or ultimately, it proves to us that what they’re doing is incredibly good and we can just refine whatever they’re doing there.

And that’s how ultimately we look at a lot of the information we we gather over a period of time and we need to align with the coach. And the coach obviously has his certain concepts and ideas and philosophies that he sticks to. And, you know, down the track, he gets different athletes through his hands and, you know, his his way of the means of dealing with athletes or successes he’s had in the past is probably what he’s going to tend toward. But having different athletes through is going to force that coach to actually think in a slightly different manner. And if we produce similar information to that coach over a period of time, we are the proof to him that what he’s doing is probably right. Or we try and prove to him in a way that obviously what he what he needs to be doing should be something slightly different to get a different outcome of that athlete.

Yeah, in terms of getting them to make those changes, one of the things that I’ve found has worked well over the past few years with swimmers is explaining similar to what you mentioned, explaining this is how it might feel when you make the change. This is what you’ll probably need to expect and it’s that discomfort, it’s that awkwardness and possible regression as well. And explaining those two things has made a big difference, especially compared to just telling them what they need to do. Because if they’re not expecting that it’s, if they’re expecting to get faster straight away, or if they’re expecting it just to feel fine, then they’re not going to actually make that change because they want to steer away from that discomfort because they think it’s wrong. And just the communication and framing it up front.

For me, at least with the athletes I’ve worked with, I’ve seen that that make a big difference. So I try to be very clear, up front every time I’m working with a new swimmer that this is what to expect and this is how it may feel. And even at that sort of top level, is that something that you’ve had to make very clear with them?

Yes, it is. And often, I mean, dealing in a fluid environment, I mean, the water, the human being is not necessarily made to be in that space of the durations of time that the top level athletes spend in the water. And ultimately, you regard your elite level swimmer as amphibious, but still looking very human. So it almost doesn’t make sense to move the human body through a body of water as quickly as possible. It is almost, it doesn’t make sense. But ultimately, we do that quite well. And charging on, I mean, we’ve seen world records being broken now and level of swimming performance has just lifted in recent years, I would say. And we do incredibly well as non-water beings moving through the water really fast. But in saying that, it’s also a very unnatural environment to be in. So sometimes just doing something slightly different will come up with a very different outcome. And that’s often where I try and explore different ranges

on a continuum. And I’m a big fan of shifting or exploring that continuum from the polar opposites or clearing streams. So I was watching the video of you having improved your technique

in the past year or something. And you were saying you were looking at just improving the crossover at the front end of your stroke, both left and right.

And that’s quite a common thing and probably one of the go-tos are fundamental things that you need to not do in freestyle is cross the midline on entry. And watching you do that, ultimately my approach would then be to say to you, okay, well, try and reach out as far as you possibly can, way out of shoulder width, and try and almost touch the side of the pool and enter there. So I shift you to that next extreme. And you might even just by thinking in the extreme, you would probably go to where it’s more central, as opposed to going out to touch the side of the pool, you probably wouldn’t go a little more central because your extreme or your average or middle ground on the continuum, is that skewed to cross in the midline? It’s something that drastic would probably find a better middle ground than the actual extreme. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And that’s something which I try and do with Sommersies.

Let’s say like, because my crossover there, like it was a bit of a crossover, but much, much less than I’ve seen with a lot of the guys who have come through our clinics, like, you know, some really big crossovers. And so for some, like for me to actually get on those, you know, in line with the shoulder, it still had to feel really wide. And it still had to feel really wide. So for someone who’s way across the center, for them, it’s going to have to feel like they’re, yeah, they’re not even anywhere close to the center. And by having it as like a, this is the time to experiment. This is the time if you over correct, like that’s fine. We can always come back to, you know, come back into where you were, but encouraging them to really overdo that the thing that they’re trying to do. I love that as a way to help people at least start to make that change. You’ll get a sense of where they are. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, that whole level of implicit learning there

and creating awareness for themselves is where it’s all at in that regard. And, you know, people feel water in a very different way. And swimming is a very kind of aesthetic sport. And obviously you have your visual learners. You have your audio learners. You’ve got, you know, different, various different levels of learning. But I find the visual always brings home what you’re trying to get at. Although it’s awkward and that type of thing just seeing that the hand is potentially, you know, passing in more of a correct line, people start readjusting their own awareness or, you know, sensory perception in their head as to what is correct. So you almost past track that whole process with a visual, I feel. Yeah, that’s good. I like to try and do basically what you’re talking about. Contrast drills where you,

to get them to develop that awareness is you get them to go extreme in one way and extreme in the other way. And then obviously that middle ground is probably where they want to be. But just, yeah, that’s a great way for developing that awareness. And I was talking to a friend of mine who’s a physio and I was telling him how, he was actually talking about a swimmer who he’s a long distance swimmer, came to him with some shoulder issues. And he, this, he was just talking to him about, right, how, why is his shoulder hurting? And there’s a lot of reasons why his shoulder could be hurting. But one of the things that the physio found was like he, this swimmer wasn’t kicking at all and everything was just coming from, from basically above the, or from the shoulders upwards. So there was very little hip rotation. There was no connection through the hips and through the torso. And so one of the things he got him to do

was just to start doing some kicking within his training sessions. And over the course of a couple of weeks, it took a lot of the pain out of the shoulder because he wasn’t, it wasn’t, everything wasn’t originating from the shoulders. It was much more connected. And he, the thing he mentioned there was, you know, if something down the chain is hurting, you usually want to look at something close, you know, closer in to where it all starts. And, and I think that’s a, at least for, you know, for me when I’m analyzing stroke, it’s like, oh, that’s an interesting way to approach it and a good way to approach it because if someone’s, you know, if that’s maybe someone’s coming under the body, it could be that they’re posture and through their hips and through their core, maybe there’s something going on there that they need to fix in order to fix that thing down the chain.

Yeah, very much so. It is the case, I mean, the shoulder is probably one of the more prevalent injuries in swimming. And often even at the highest level, the athletes have the fatigue or resort to wanting to stroke harder or feeling greater pressure in the hand, but being in a very compromised position under fatigue. And that’s generally when the shoulders start getting overloaded and little needles start popping up. And then, you know, obviously go into, you know, the deep delusions of injury and a ladle for a while. So I can often, you know, pick inklings of that happening with a lot of, you know, freestyle swims in particular. And I always try and go to the kick as well and the benefit of the kick in absolute, you know, improving stroke length.

So the kick has, you know, compounding factor to increasing stroke length is not necessarily over kicking, but a consistency in the kick. And then bringing the consistency of the kick to the timing of the stroke is crucial. So whether it’s 2B to 4B to a 6B kick, it needs to be timed in with the actual stroke to get the outcome or the benefit of the kick itself.

So if we consider the kick in isolation and we do kick sets, just the kickboard or head down with a snorkel and, you know, you get your top former in the kick set comes out, right? And we all know who that is. Then we go to a pool set with pool boy and bands with paddles. And, you know, the guys go down, we probably, you know, get to know who the best puller is in the squad, but very seldom in the squads I’ve worked with that sub-elite even to elite level are those two individuals the best kicker or the guy that won the kick set and the guy that won the stroke set are they the best swimmer? More often potentially the best stroker is the best swimmer, but very seldom are they the best swimmer. It’s the one that’s more or less average or just above average in both kick and pool that generally is the guy that is the best swimmer. And ultimately then the kick is only

of, well, the kick is of greater worth tied in with stroke. That makes sense. So the propulsion we get from the kick is only is compounded when it’s actually tied into timing of the actual stroke. So what you mentioned there by, you know, your physio friend and, you know, the athlete with a shoulder injury and all that type of thing, going back down to kick and just understanding the concepts of the kick, we see that at the highest level too. A lot of athletes are rendered out for a period of time and they need to get back in the water and we need them in the water as soon as possible because it is just such an unnatural environment. So a lot of the coaches just resort to kick and often with a lot of them who were average kickers to start off with become really good kickers and the moment they turn the stroke on, all of a sudden you just see them swimming in a totally different way and it just seems, well, it’s often much better than they were

to start off with. And is there certain drills or ways you try and get those swimmers to feel in order to help them connect up the timing of their kick and the rest of their stroke? Is there a couple of go-tos that you have? Yeah, there is. There’s actually one that I do quite regularly and it’s actually very difficult to work out. And I even have top level swimmers, guys who have been making finals at a World Championships freestyle struggle with this one. But I feel if you can master this at any level, I feel you’re winning or you’re definitely on the right track. And this is when you can potentially use yourself for sharing with the guys out there. But the whole understanding of timing, now we have different rhythms or rates that we want to swim at and we all kind of have more or less of an idealistic rating that we conform to. So subconsciously, if we’re just swimming nicely in the water, we generally have a certain rate

that we conform to. So let’s consider that rate as your kind of average, your middle ground, right? Now, if we develop a kick and let’s say we keep the kick,

a forebeat kick. So four beats of the kick within one stroke cycle. So from right hand entry in to right hand entry in, they’re four kicks. Now, we keep the forebeat kick going consistently.

I like the athletes shifting from a low rating to what they’re normalised, from a low rating through to the first area of the pool. And then shifting to their middle ground rating and then shifting to a slightly higher rating. And for you as the coach or someone on the side of the pool deck looking in, you need to see those very definite gear shifts over the three ratings. So kick stay is exactly the same, but the rating changes over three thirds of the pool.

And then what you do is, once you get to the opposite side, say in a 50 metre pool, then you try and aim to keep your stroke rate to that middle ground, right? Keep the stroke rate to that middle ground and then you start altering your kick around your actual stroke rate. And this is where it gets really tough. Because ultimately, if we think about running even, if we’re running on the spot, the faster we move our arms, the faster we move our legs, right? In swimming, it doesn’t necessarily need to work that way. So the moment we rate up, we have this tendency to want to kick more and often overkick and that becomes a very reactive, inefficient type stroke. So overcoming this one is probably the biggest challenge for most, but generally comes with a best outcome. If we can adjust kick tempo around consistent stroke rate. So again, go through your three gears, but the kick changes from a two beat to a four beat to a six beat kick

and your rating stays exactly the same. And that’s within that last 50, we’re saying, or you’d go through say 350s where the first one would be a two beat, then a four beat and then a six beat?

No, so just through the 50, yeah. Oh, gotcha, okay, so. Yeah, so through the 50, you would go through, yeah, three segments of the 50, break it into three segments and literally to 15 meters, so don’t do any underwater, but through 15, through 30, then to 45. That you would, through the fifth, well, to the 15, you’d be doing, you know, rating at your lower rate, keeping the kick consistent. Then from 15 to 30, you’d be at your middle ground, rate keeping the kick consistent. Then from 30 to 45 or to the end of the pool, you’d be a higher rate keeping your kick consistent. And then, you know, rest at the other end of the pool, push off, then keeping your, try and get up and get your stroke at your normal, at your middle ground to start off with, and don’t even kick. And then start bringing a two beat kick through the 15, and 15 to 30, increase the kick beats to like four kicks. Stroke stays exactly the same. And then through the 30 into the wall,

you’d probably pick the kick up to around a six beat kick, but the stroke rate stays exactly the same. And first on the side of the pool, if you start switching it up and you start getting good at this, the coach or your fellow athlete or peer should be looking into the pool and saying you adjusted stroke on that one and you adjusted kick on that one. And if you get to that and it’s very defined, then I think you’ve come a long way. Oh, that’s good. I became, I was becoming a lot more aware of this probably, probably a year and a half ago, when I started doing, I did some filming with a swim rapper in Queensland, Andrew Spoor. He was a turn of freestyleer and he used, he was very good with a four beat kick. And I was sort of looking at that and he spoke a bit about it. And then I started to sort of look a little bit deeper into that and started to play around with it myself. And I found over the course of that 18 months

I’ve gotten a lot better at being able to shift gears from your two beat, four beat, six beat. And especially for distance swimming, I’ve found anything 200 meters or more really, but particularly distance swimming, being able to control your effort and output and be a lot more efficient by choosing a two or a four beat for those longer swims. It’s, it really gives you a lot of, we can save a lot of effort and energy, but it really helps me control my speed very well. Because with the timing of that kick, you can just really settle into a good rhythm. And that’s what I find can sort of set out like the consistent breathing pattern and a good kick will, is it the basis of a good rhythm there? And yeah, and it’s something that I’d never, I hadn’t really ever considered much before. And having swum since I was like four years of age and only just figuring it out now. And I’ve been coaching for that long. It’s like, well, I can see how some of those guys

at the very top have made, not have sort of been able to do it straight away. Because it’s just one of those extra things that I don’t think a lot of people get taught early on. Oh, for sure. Definitely. And timing is key in all strokes. And just how propulsive means from the kick and the stroke work together is crucial. And ultimately, if you talk about efficiency in swimming, that timing goes a very, very long way. And often if we come up to like an over rotation in a freestyle breathing, over rotate into the breathing side, often that throws the timing up. And as we fatigue, we breathe for longer. And then all of a sudden we’ve just become so inefficient because we’re rotating so much more to the one side. And through our core, are unable to kind of keep our hips up, hips start dropping. But all of a sudden we start working against ourselves and the timing just goes out of back.

Even at the highest level often, if you see guys and maybe a 200 freestyle, 400 freestyle, you’d see that one guy, he’d be going out quite strong and he might be leading the race, let’s say. And then if he senses through the middle portion of the race or to the back end of the race, the table is starting to kind of come up on him and he can feel that he’s losing ground. And then he reacts. And once they react, they often lose the timing of their stroke. And all of a sudden you just see them go straight out the back. And that’s what we try and prevent athletes from doing. Especially if you are kind of that athlete that is a little bit stronger out the front end of your race. Then maybe the guys are probably going to be coming back at you towards the end. But even sensing that, you just need to kind of maintain relatively efficient,

relative efficiency within your stroke, good length, good pressure on the water and all that type of thing. It all comes down to that rhythm and flow and that connectedness of your stroke. Yeah, that’s a big one. And what I’ve started to teach at Clinics is we go through drills and then we do some swimming in between because we want to connect the purpose of the drill to the swim stroke. And one of the things that I’ve found helpful with that is getting them to think about what you’re trying to achieve in the drill, being your thinking brain, that’s where you want to be. But when you come to swimming, to the swim portion of that, try and go a bit more by feel because as soon as you’re overthinking it when you’re swimming, you’re going to lose that timing by 0.05 of a second or 0.1 of a second. And as soon as you lose it even by that much, completely yeah, disconnect. So that’s when you really want to go more for that sort of feeling brain.

And that’s when the timing comes in and that rhythm and connection. And it doesn’t take much to lose it. Yeah, for sure. I mean, a great way to kind of go around that and I like the way you kind of hear and talk about your thinking, your feeling brain kind of speak

if we consider a particular drill

and we isolate that drill to one particular thing that we’re trying to improve for the athletes, then it couldn’t be quite contrasting or quite far removed from the stroke itself. But we need to think about what that drill is trying to achieve, right? And that’s where we’re very much in that thinking space in your example.

And we need to do it the right way and appropriately to the intention. And the drills are just done to kind of get that 400 drill out of the way, drill and swim, type of thing in a warmup. And to me, drills are probably the most important part of the actual warmup because that’s what sets us up. And if we think of like priming a stove when we’re camping and we don’t need to do that these days, but priming a stove and camping, you’re ultimately getting that stove ready to burn. And that’s how I feel kind of drills serve that purpose. So drills could change from one day to the next with a group of athletes, but ultimately they are there to kind of prime us to get the job done when the man sets it.

And the way it would look through drills there, they could be re-isolated and very kind of, you know, left of sense, but we need to understand what they’re trying to achieve. We’re in that thinking space. And then we progressively move that drill into what makes better sense and how it could potentially tie into swimming. And then we get into, you know, levels where it actually starts tying into swimming. And then all of a sudden it’s in our stroke and then we start feeling it within our stroke. And that’s how we generally float around progressive means within a skill acquisition type space.

It’s good to hear you say that because that’s what we’ve, what I’ve tried to do and do that with the swimmers who come to our clinics is that when they leave, the way we like them to incorporate it into their training is as part of the warmup every session if they can. Otherwise, just as often as they can, do some drills that are specific to those things that you want to work on, do them in the warmup, get a feel for those things that you want to change in your stroke and then just go about your main set and your session and obviously keep that in the back of your mind, but you set it up. You set up the feel for it with the drills and doing that regularly and consistently is how you’ll change that habit and acquire that skill. It’s not about doing one session focused on technique once every two or three weeks because it’s not going to change anything there. It’s about that consistency.

For sure. In this environment, as a natural environment, as it is in the water, we need to do it consistently in order to get the carryover. For sure.

And before we, I know you’ve got to go soon, is there anything that you feel like we haven’t talked about that could be helpful for some, say a triathlete or an open water swimmer out there who might be stuck in a bit of a plateau and they just want to get faster or they’re frustrated with their swimming? Is there some advice that you have for someone out there who wants to get better but they feel a little bit stuck?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I come from a bit of a triathlon background myself was an age group swimmer at school and all that got into triathlon as well and was relatively competitive, well, mostly off-road triathlon. So yeah, I’ve been in that position before and being stuck in a rut, especially on the swimming front. And ultimately with triathletes, I feel the struggle, the biggest struggle with triathletes is often the case of while you’re doing one thing, you’re thinking about the other two disciplines.

And that was always my issues. I always liked dealing with a lot of information. So I never really got to grips with one particular thing or when I was doing swimming, I was thinking about the bike and the run but I was really thinking about swimming. And we really need to, I mean, in a triathlon space, get our heads around actually dealing with the sport that we’re currently doing and really kind of getting our teeth into while we’re doing it.

That to me would probably be some advice I’d give to triathletes just having been in that space before because that’s something I feel I could have done better for sure.

And then open water swimmers, it just generally is the case. I mean, monotonous is certainly where it’s at with them and heaps and heaps of laps up and down the pool or laps around open water, whatever it is. And what I’d say here could probably speak to anyone but just trying to think of your stroke in a slightly different way or breaking your stroke or breaking your, I’m going to say, your set, breaking into proportions or by size portions and having a different focus on each of those. And if we think about like a 1500 meter in an Olympic event, those athletes, the way they think about it is some of them actually think about it in 500 meter portions, others think about it in 300 meter portions but ultimately when we do analysis on those races I can see a characteristic trait for each swimmer as to what they’re trying to focus on and sometimes it might be every second turn and sometimes it might be every third 50

that they focus on something different. The rate might change every third 50, their turn might be improved every second turn and or they might be trying to even split the third and the fourth 200 something like that. It’s just there always seems to be a strategy around that and with open water in particular they like getting out there and getting into rhythm and getting a flow as well but ultimately to start thinking around not necessarily a pacing strategy but just different, a thinking strategy or queuing strategy, Louis is probably phrasing it that way, that if we go out there we want to feel kind of good easy efficient flow in the way we’re doing it and obviously we’re not fatigued to start off with so we can find that kind of easy connectedness in that flow and not try and overdo it out front and then the moment fatigue starts setting in that might onset slightly earlier with some might onset slightly later with others

then we just need to have a queuing mechanism as to what that might be and often in open water that might relate to the breathing pattern. How are we breathing? Is the timing of our breaths impeding elements of our stroke? And often it does and if I could wish anything upon any swimmer in this world it would be that we didn’t have to breathe because breathing throws the spanner in the works with regards to swimming often and dealing at my level I’ve only seen very very few athletes breathe properly

in a freestyle space

so that queue could be potentially around kind of timing of the breaths and what that looks like then moving on from there it might be timing of the kick in relation to the stroke and challenge all athletes doing longer distances to try and find out what that particular point is that they know whether the timing is on or not whether it’s entry of the right hand stroke and the kick down on the left leg there needs to be a critical point that if you nail that you feel your timing is on so that might be something you could think about that middle portion to kind of back end of your race and then really towards the back end of a race you know whether it’s 10Ks, a 5K or a 3K or a 1500 you know to not feel like you need to shift it up a gear and all of a sudden some are very different to upper stroke that gear adjustment could be quite progressive and you need to maintain relative efficiency kind of doing that and often I feel if they try and shift gears

they react and that’s where we start to give them that disconnectedness that we spoke about a little earlier

yeah, does that make sense or…? Yeah I think that’s great especially yeah so I mean the first thing is being present when you are in the water and as best you can trying to focus on the thing that you’re doing and it’s very easy to get distracted and think about what you’ve got coming up or just wanting to get through the session and particularly with swim watches where people are always on them starting stopping it’s just a massive distraction from your technique and I think so many people could improve so much faster if they just left the watch in their swim bag and didn’t use it while they were swimming because you are going to get a lot more benefit from actually being present and feeling the water and feeling what your stroke is doing and feeling how much effort you’re putting in for the pace that you’re getting and get that time just from the 60 second clock you’ll get so much more out of that than by uploading it to stravering

and seeing that over the course of a year your pace has improved that way but no I think leave that in your gear bag it doesn’t help you most of the time Yeah I couldn’t agree more when I was running my fastest I used to leave my heart rate monitor at home that’s when I’d leave you on my fastest

Yeah that’s right because you’re just too worried about oh jeez my heart rates up this high and you know exactly you start regulating yourself around that or if it’s not looking good you almost start subduing yourself so it’s all trying out of yourself and it is a crazy crazy barrier they’re there for good reason I would say and a lot of these smart devices nowadays give us so much information it’s awesome but yeah we get too caught up in it and triathletes having a space that I’ve been in for quite a period of time we get too caught up in that space and the more gimmicks the better and ultimately then it’s just they become huge impedance to a real performance in the end of the day Yeah couldn’t agree more Well Ryan thank you so much for being on the podcast and I’ve really enjoyed chatting to you and I’m sure that those people listening have got a lot out of it as well so thank you very much and for anybody who wants to

maybe get in touch with you what’s the best way

Generally on phone call no problem otherwise on email that’s probably the easiest I would say I’m always open for kind of sharing my ideas and all that type of thing and ultimately to me you know regardless of what level of athletes you are I’d always love people super exceeding their own expectations and that’s ultimately what I’m here for at the highest level it’s really tricky we look for marginal gains it’s not 1% it’s 0.01% that we generally looking for and we you know celebrate those but at a lower level there definitely are different ways of thinking about things that could crowd an outcome and that obviously at the work you do as well and just seeing some of the time drops guys have had you know in their triathlon and open water swims you know the work you’re doing clearly is kind of having an impact and you know I’m all in in that regard so people are kind of wanting to come to me with with questions thoughts or ideas

you know welcome them all and yet phone call or email is probably the best way if you enjoyed today’s podcast and you’re interested in improving your own technique we have a number of camps coming up in 2020 that if you are an adult you swim in any capacity whether it’s for fitness whether you’re doing pool swimming competitive swimming or triathlon or open water swimming we have a number of camps coming up in Thailand, Hawaii and Nusa which is in Queensland Australia so if you go to our website at effortlesswimming.com you’ll see the details of each of those camps and what we do at those camps is each day at the very start of the the camps we do underwater filming and analysis with you and we look at the two to three aspects of your stroke that are worth working on and improving those things that will give you the biggest benefit over the course of three to six months and then throughout the camp every single day

we work with you very closely one on one where we help you improve your technique and make those changes over the course of the camp and then you leave the camp not only having had a great time had a lot of fun but you will have improved your technique your times will more than likely have come down over the course of the five or seven days and you’ll have an action plan you know exactly what you need to do and you will have started that process to find yourself swimming faster three to six months down the track and so if that sounds like something that you would enjoy having a swimming holiday and a swimming camp in Hawaii, Thailand or Nusa then check out the website at effortlesswimming.com I run all of those camps and we also have two to three other coaches on each of the camps as well so it’s not just me that you work with but a number of other coaches other coaches we have on board ones like Gary Haring who’s former Olympic swimmer

an Olympic coach from New Zealand professional triathlete Mitchell Kibbe we have Phil Rush who has the fastest two and three-way crossing of Lingers Channel we have Eony Jones who you’ve probably heard on this podcast a number of times so there’s a wide range of other coaches who do attend the clinics and coach with me and who you’ll be working with on those camps so I hope to see it one of them in 2020 most of them are at least half full and some of them are already sold out so just make sure you do book that early if you are interested so thanks very much for listening I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you on another episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast 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