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 the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Eni Jones and this is a coach who I’ve had on many times before. Eni’s probably my favourite person to talk to about technique because I think we’re on the same page when it comes to looking at different ways to explain things, different analogies to use and just really figuring out how to work, work in the best way possible with all the different types of swimmers that I see. And Eni’s over in Boulder, Colorado, I caught up with her last year where she does some work at the swim labs pool over there and did a session with her, which was awesome. She’s also the creator of the Eni Boy or the Eni Billy if you’re in the States, which is a pool boy, which just, it’s probably the best pool boy that I’ve used

that sits you up a lot higher than your typical pool boy. You can fill it on either side so you can change the buoyancy of it. You can also double up as a water bottle if you choose to. But that’s what I see most of the most triathletes using these days is the Eni Boy or the Eni Boy too. It’s the latest model. So if you’re looking for a good pool boy, like if you’re a triathlete or open water swimmer that you’re doing a lot of swimming with a pool boy and paddles, check out the Eni Boy because by far my favourite pool boy. Eni and I today we’re talking about the new rules of open water swimming. So she’s done a lot of research in the last 12 months on different ways to basically swim fast in open water and she’s kind of gone down the rabbit hole of technique and looked at what the elite open water swimmers and elite triathletes are doing when it comes to all the different aspects of their stroke and she breaks it down and she’s looked at different ways

to teach those different things that they’re doing. And it’s probably quite different than what you’ve heard from a lot of other coaches because I think Eni has a very good eye for identifying these things and not only that but just a very different way of explaining things and I really enjoyed this episode. I got a lot from it and I always do and let’s cut to the conversation. So Eni Jones lives in Boulder, Colorado. Go and check her out at the swim labs there or go and get an Eni Boy for yourself because she’s just a great coach. Love talking to her. Here we go. We’ve spoken a lot before. I’ve had you on the podcast I think four times now. And I think I refer to you probably every second episode.

I just I love the way you teach and some of the analogies that you use. And I think we’re very similar in that we just love we love swimming. We love to look at new and better ways to explain things and teach things and and help people get quicker because I mean, you’re over there in Boulder. You’re working at the swim lab there and you work with a lot of different people. So you’re seeing so many different styles, so many different speeds and abilities and and I think that’s that’s why we’re very similar. So you got in contact with me last week and said I’d love to come back on the podcast. The what I’ve sort of been researching the last 12 months or so. I feel like I’ve got some stuff that would be really useful for for people to hear and never not going to say yes to to having you back on the podcast. So let’s let’s talk about what you’ve researched in the last 12, 24 months since since we last caught up.

Yeah. Hi. So the last few probably about 18 months, I’ve been able to go through a lot of different types of swimmers not only in our library, but clients that have gone through and seeing things that work really, really well and then being able to be in a lab and actually analyze not only people’s stroke underneath, but also the speed and velocity and lacquery that their arms go through the air, their height above the water, the place they’re breathing, the difference between a sprint stroke and a distance stroke. It’s also after I look at these different things, it’s helped me try to find different ways to teach it. So, for instance, I had a sprinter come in recently that wanted to break 20 in the 50 yard freestyle. You guys don’t have yards, but he was an NCAA swimmer. And his coaches kept saying, well, just reach straight out. And so we started talking about salamander obliques stretching through the obliques on one side

and then actually hiking the hip on the other side and really punching and being much more faster and aggressive through the water and through that hip drive, being able to access not only more and bigger muscles, but more core. So when I contacted Mike Bottom, who’s the coach of University of Michigan to how he taught more of a hip driven freestyle, I took it a little bit step, a little step further, not only from the hips, being able to ride the surge, but also being faster through the air than the water. And I call this split tempo because we are dealing with two different elements. We’re dealing with water and air. So it’s not like you have even cadence that you see on a bike or running. And then I would analyze different sprinters through the country, you know, just how they’re even underneath, but maybe one arm with the bent elbow is a little slower. And then the other arm allows for more of a hip drive

and a surge forward. So the research has helped me not only analyze the length of people’s strokes or the distance per stroke, but also in the power phase, which I say is when your arm gets to the shoulder, the elbow, the wrist and the shoulder should be all together. But realizing that there’s a different tempo between underneath and above, and there doesn’t have to be this perfection and synchronicity above the water. I’m one of, I always tell people to ride as high as you can on the water because it’s easier and really lift from the chest, have the neck be neutral. And, you know, so many classic swim teaching is look down, be flat, look low, but yet it’s a little bit harder and it requires much more training to push through water than to push through air. So there’s different ways I feel like to access your core to manipulate your body position and then just lately being able or the last year being able to look at

different swimmers and see how high, you know, they are out of the water to see how fast one arm is the other arm is even going through some of your videos to look at the angle of your power phase that I just loved because it matched, I matched it to about 17 Olympians here, which I thought, that’s so amazing that at one point in their stroke there are these similarities across the board. And that being said, you don’t have to swim exactly like someone, but people that are doing things well are doing a lot of the same things. And I think that those are some of the things that can be backed up with research, with measuring, you know, and also a pretty good eye for detail. Let’s I want to talk about one of the first things you mentioned there with the recovery phase, the stroke, so over the top, and this is something I’ve started to teach quite a bit now. And it’s not relevant for everyone, but for a lot of people that one arm is going to be different

over the top than the other. You mentioned one arm might come over with the sort of higher elbow, a bit more bend in the arm where the other arm will come over fairly straight. And the reason I’ve started teaching this is partly from what I’ve seen you talk about, partly from watching a lot of triathlon or triathlete swim and partly from what I saw myself doing when I had a wetsuit on and when I was swimming open water. So this is something that I started doing really only when I started training for open water with the wetsuit on as a bit more restricted. So I come over almost with a straight arm on one side and a bit more of a sort of bent elbow recovery on the other and one arm is faster than the other. And this is something that you’ve started to talk a lot about. And how many people do you see this in? Or how many people do you think this type of stroke would suit? You know, I see it actually in a lot of people, not only

I see it in pool swimmers that I think would be phenomenal open water swimmers. So when Bruce Gemmell was coaching Katie Ledecky, he actually so many coaches tried to get rid of the I call it the gallop and try to make things real methodical and even, but then you’re never able to ride the surge and get in the core and get more reach. But there are people like Katie Ledecky who have a natural gallop and you can measure the difference between one arm and the other and then underneath. And then Bruce’s son, Andrew has one. And if you look at 10 K and the Olympics, you do see it does allow you to actually reach more and reach easier. So the reason horses gallop is it’s super easy recovery. It’s not really controlled. They’re able to get more reach by letting go. And people are afraid if they let go, they’re not going to be able to reengage. But if they let go a little bit faster, it makes that catch a little bit more deliberate,

which for open water and depending on the type of venue it is, whether you’re in some kind of ocean that’s really moving, it really allows you to come in with a lot more force than kind of the classic swimming catch where you’re placing and then setting. So because that water is moving, you actually want to get in a little more aggressively. Use your core, you know, go forward and down a little bit with that arm and even, you know, you’re not totally getting rid of the glide, but you’re actually capturing more forward and down. So I started to see it a lot. And then when you hear some coaches say, oh, you know, try to breathe on both sides and make everything really methodical and mechanical. And I thought, wow, they’re they’re losing a lot of easy speed that you can just get by changing your airspeed a little bit more or with a wetsuit to actually have a flatter, wider arm is easier on your shoulders than, you know, the high elbow.

We do want the high elbow underneath and that’s why it’s taught. But through the air, you know, I always say there’s no points for pretty. So, you know, it’s really getting from here the there that people need to do. And when you mentioned letting it go, you mean as in when someone’s coming over the top and then when they go to enter the water, you mean sort of let it go, throw it forward, keep that momentum driving forward in front of the shoulder before you start the catch. Is that what you mean when you’re afraid? Exactly. So letting it go through the air rather than being super controlled and slow through the air, really let it go. And then once you enter the water, there is you’re actually moving forward and and capturing more water rather than a real high catch, which ends up being better. You know, the high catch can kind of work in a pool because the water’s pretty flat and you can put your hand there and then put that forearm down.

But in open water, it’s so you really want to capture the water earlier rather than, you know, kind of gliding out flat. Unless, you know, you’re in a lake and it’s completely flat and it’s not moving. But I swam at a mountain lake a few days ago and there was really high wind. So that even though there’s no current in the lake, the top of the water was moving. So it was one of those things. You know, wow, I need to get at least six inches lower or kind of that 45 degree angle going forward and down to get to a little more still water that you can set. Because really setting setting that catch but going into it without a lot of control is good because then you have faster air speed and you’re more deliberate. I mean, we call it, we call the word recovery. And then people let go, they just relax too much on the top. But, you know, you can claim a lot of speed through the air and still keep, you know, the length of your stroke

and the power underneath. The way I like to teach recovery is it’s recovery because the hand in the forearm should be quite relaxed, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be assertive with it. So you’re really using the kind of using your deltoid, your scapula sort of initiates the recovery to draw that shoulder just out of the water. But you’re kind of using your deltoid and your elbow a little bit to draw that hand over. And that’s how you can stay relaxed through the forearms and the hands. But you want to get that hand in with quite a bit of force out in front because that’s when you can start to be more controlled in the water. As soon as you’re too relaxed and slow with the recovery, you get pushed around a bit more if there’s any chop about. And when you talk about increasing your stroke rate, a lot of people see that as, well, I need to pull faster under the water. And it’s, you know, a lot of the times,

yeah, you pull through a little bit quick, but it’s going to come from increasing the speed of the recovery over the top. And that way you can still hold more water underneath. And one of the things you mentioned last week was what you’ve you’ve been looking a lot into is for a lot of good open water. So as they spend, they focus a little bit more on the back of the stroke, whereas the pool swimmers tend to be a bit longer out in front. Can you talk a little bit about that and what you’ve you’ve seen with the people you’ve been working with? So I’ve seen sprinters really have to get a lot more out front. And I even say for some of the ITU athletes, I coach, they have to, I call it Chinese takeout, but they have to be in the mix the first 200 yards. So I even think back of when, you know, Richard Quick worked with Dara Torres in 2008 and he actually shortened her stroke a little bit in the back to get more in the front.

So but that being said, it’s hard to swim a whole mile that way. And that’s where people don’t realize you can actually change your stroke for not only the conditions, but, you know, for different parts in the race. So for those ITU athletes, they have to be in the mix the first 200 yards or their race is over. They’re not going to make it up on the bike and the run. So being able to have, I always say, like arrows in your quiver, different things you can pull out, not only the current, the conditions, but so much of the reach comes from the core. So when you think of a boxer, you wouldn’t punch someone straight in the face to engage your core. You actually punch forward and down. And are you still reaching? Absolutely. But the reaches from under the armpit, the elbow and to get the core involved, that hand needs to kind of be tiny bit lower and with a little more deliberation. So in the front, when I’m been measuring sprinters,

yes, they get a lot more in the front. But it’s been really interesting to even look at some of the videos that are online of people that swim the 1500 and they start to play with speeds and they’re able to change some things mid-race. They look at Katie Ledecky, Clark Smith that won NCAAs in the 1650. He just won the 1500. But people are able to throughout the race actually manipulate their body position and kind of change where they are depending on whether they’re sprinting to get away or they’re just in the flow of how they’re swimming. That’s one thing I really like about the way you teach. And I’d like to think I do the same is adapt it to whoever you’re working with and whatever they’re training for, whether it’s open water or a sprint distance triathlon, because it’s it’d be really nice to have one way to swim freestyle to say, this is how it is. This is this is what you need to to do. And this is how I’m going to teach everyone, but it’s not the case.

And that’s not going to get the best results for for all the different types of athletes that you work with. So that’s why I think it’s very much like a it’s an art to teaching some of the science behind it and using or pulling from all these different bits of knowledge that you have of the stroke and putting those together and delivering those to whoever you’ve got in front of you. And it’s a much harder thing to do than saying, this is how we’re going to teach everyone to swim, but I think it’s a lot more effective than having that one ideal type of freestyle in the back of your mind. Yeah. And I even know when a wetsuit, when a triathlete puts on a wetsuit, sometimes they swim like they’ve had an epidural from the waist down. And I really try to teach a cross connection, almost like a superhero taken off between the right hand, the left foot and lifting that left tip, having a naval swim swivel side to side, even salamander obliques,

keeping the T solid, the sternum in the shoulders. But sometimes people say, oh, I put on my wetsuit and my time is exactly the same, but they are not using their body once they put on their wetsuit. And I actually think, you know, learning to be high in the water is actually such a good thing because, you know, it allows you to feel what that’s like to be easier. But then you can start even using your body and being a lot faster. We were talking before the call, a couple of drills that you’ve been using with with a lot of people lately that aren’t your more traditional drills. But you’ve you’ve found they’ve been really good for really practicing the open water, fighting that open water stroke. So can you talk about those drills that we were talking about before the call? Yeah, so there’s been a few drills. I want people to get in their lat earlier without losing the reach. So a lot of times to activate something, you need to touch it.

So I have people grab their lat and with their left arm and then swim just with their right arm. So as they’re reaching, they can feel that reach from the base of their lat to activate early. The other drill I like is I call it backwards. Namaste and you put one hand or you’re actually your whole forearm between your thoracic so that you’re lifted through the chest. And once again, do one arm that next drill, I call fiddle faddle because there’s a huge cross connection between your right hand and your left foot through the core. So you put a paddle on your right hand, but you don’t put your finger through it. You actually grab over the end. So it’s like a monkey punch in the front and then the fin is on the opposite foot. So as you’re driving with the right, that left hip lifts and then that left leg can go down. So there’s a huge cross connection. And then the next drill I like is a tap back drill. And I would notice that nationals and worlds,

people get in the warm down pool and they pull through and then tap the water on the other side to open their chest. But it also stabilizes that deep catch in the front. So you’re actually angling forward and down as that opposite arm is touching to the opposite side of the body. So that to me has been it’s it’s almost like a reverse catch up because a pause is actually front to back, left to right, not both hands flat in front of you. So it’s it’s been those drills have been really great. Just working with people because as soon as they feel it, they can activate it and then they they go, oh, that was so much better. Yeah, I like that because for me, I think one of the more difficult things to to teach is the final stage of the stroke. So once you’ve got the fundamentals in place, then it really comes down to finding your your rhythm and your tempo and being able to settle into that for a race. And to me, it sounds like those kinds of drills

help someone get that sort of timing of the stroke and being able to find that rhythm a little bit like find your rhythm when you’re dancing. I mean, I’m never going to have that. I’ve I haven’t got a dancing bone in my body, but yeah, I think maybe I’ve practiced enough sort of tempo or rhythm dancing drills, whatever, you know, it’s possible. But yeah, I think I think being able to have them find that that rhythm using those drills, it would be a good way to do it. So I’m going to start using some of them with the yeah, the lessons that I do because it’s different to what I’ve sort of taught before. Well, and there are so many crossovers with other sports when you watch somebody ski and the top part of their body is silent and their hips get to move or when they’re tangoing and the top part of their body is really stable and solid. But yet their hips get to move. So so much we can do from our core. But we also, you know, you don’t want somebody looking like

they’re having a seizure moving all their body. Some of it needs to be set in place. But the drills actually get people sometimes it doesn’t get lost in translation, but people think they’re doing something. So by even grabbing the front of their paddle gets them to drive down with their knuckles and use their forearms and their lats earlier. And one thing that you mentioned earlier was a house Salamander swims. And I’ve heard you mention that before. And like this is 12 months ago, whatever. But I never quite got that. But then I mean, I’ve got you on video here. So people who are listening to it can’t can’t see. But when you mentioned it before the call, it clicked for me. So what sort of what I’m what I’m thinking of when it comes to that house, a Salamander swims is they. So Salamanders have short arms, but they stretch through one side of their body. But then to get more reach from that little arm, they hike that hop opposite hip.

So when you look at a Salamander, they’re I call it Salamander obliques because they’re really stretching through one side. But to get more stretch, they have to lift that other side. So it’s you are kind of moving. And I went through some of even Mike Botton’s videos from the hip driven freestyle underneath. And you can actually see the sides of the body and the obliques working. And sometimes we think it’s all lats, but we really want to even get more core and how do you activate and get more core? And a lot of times it is from even moving that other side to get more reach on the side that you’re working. Yeah, because when you were talking about that, I’m thinking of there’s some great shots under the water and above the water that they take it, like World Champs and Australian Trials. And we see particularly the sprinters where that hip drives, that hip drives forward and they drive forward and they get that sort of extra reach out in front.

It’s it’s like that. The hips are sort of moving forwards back, forwards back. And it’s it’s quite different to what I know we were taught 10, 15 years ago, where it’s really just getting so, so much reach through through their core, their obliques. And there was a really good video of Kam McAvoy swimming in the 50 freestyle at the Australian Australian Nationals in April. Have you seen that? Oh, I saw it. Yeah. I’m going to watch it again. It’s it’s basically that like you. He’s so just so strong through the core and so controlled through the the stroke that he’s but within that, he’s able to to do what you’re talking about there. Whereas he gets this big reach out in front, that opposite that hip snaps, snaps forward, and then it’s just one stroke after the other, very consistent with it. And I think for anyone who’s listening to this, Google Kam and McAvoy 50 meter freestyle underwater and it’ll probably come up.

So this was at the 2017 Australian Nationals. Amazing video of it and describes perfectly what you’re talking about there. It’s been an interesting thing to even bring into the triathlete world because most a lot of triathletes do have strong cores, but they’re not swimming with them at all. I mean, they sometimes look like a little burrowing animal or they’re real low and flat in the water. And, you know, it’s not high hip driven, but it’s actually a kind of a fun, easy way to swim. And it really helps siting because, you know, with that hip snap and the core being higher in the water, you’re able to ride the surge not only, you know, when you’re reaching, but if you’re need to site at the same time, there’s a point in there when you’re moving forward that it’s very easy to look. When you watch enough videos of really good swimmers swimming open water, you see, you start to see these patterns emerge. And for me, I don’t think I really noticed any of this stuff

the first couple of years that I was coaching. But now that I’ve just been doing it for quite a while and working with so many different people and looking at so many videos from all different angles, you start to see these patterns emerge. And I think for me, the reason I love to get your perspective on things is I think you tend to see some things that I often miss and and then having you sort of translate those things. And then I can use them in my my coaching, which is which is really useful. I was running clinics on the weekend up in Sydney. And there was one summer he was he just couldn’t get much power from his stroke. And just watching the underwater footage from the side, I saw that he was basically over rotating through his shoulders. So he’s rotating to I think it was sort of 50 to 60 degrees through his shoulders. When you look from the front, 50 to 60 degrees, which is is too much. There was there’s a video on I think it was the USA swimming website

where one of the biomechanies he was basically looking at the angle that the elite guys rotate to. And when they’re not breathing, it’s about 32 to 38 degrees. And then it goes up to sort of 42 to 43 degrees when they do breathe. But primarily if you take the angle of their shoulders at the furthest point of rotation, it’s about 32 to 38 degrees. So he was exactly twice as much as he actually needed to. So for him to actually get some power from his stroke, he had to rotate less, which we got him to do. But the other thing that the cause of that was he was throwing his shoulder down too deep when he was extending out in front. So the shoulder wasn’t near the side of his face where we want it to be. It was getting thrown very low and just he lost all engagement in that shoulder. So one of the and then you’re also pushing more water because that shoulder is lower. That exactly. It’s a lot more dragon resistance.

So for one of the cues for him was to keep the shoulder near the side of the face or near his cheek and it allowed him to not only sort of engage his his scapula and engage his lats a bit more. But it also helped him keep that the right angle is extending out in front where the fingers are lower than the wrist, wrist is lower than the elbow. Whereas if you drop that shoulder too deep or too low in the water, then there’s a good chance that elbow is going to drop. The fingertips will come up and you’ll put the brakes on out in front. So I call that kitty petting like if you’re going to pet a little kitty, you reach out with the hand real high and there’s just not a lot of power in that. Yeah, exactly. So that one change alone can help someone get so much more from the front of their stroke and I mean, I don’t say too often, but you know, probably in one in five people that I work with, I reckon see that in their in their stroke.

But it just it just helps them engage those bigger muscles so much better. And that’s why I really like the Theraband work, where you you’re working on building sort of scapular control and stability because it gives you that awareness of being of what the the scaps are doing, what the shoulder blades are doing and and keeping the chest out and being tall and proud, just like. Yeah. And I even saw a video of Michael Phelps playing in a program and he got on the T box and he bent over and was taking his arms, you know, side to side, like opening up this the upper thoracic and the scapula and that’s so important. That’s why that one drill, putting your hand way up there to get that movement because the older we get, we really lose that mobility there. And the worse our posture becomes and everything we do and people don’t realize the more mobility you have there, the more you can reach and engage in a in a much better position.

Yeah. And especially that upper thoracic mobility. That’s one thing that we test at the clinics. And oh, nice. The with the tests that we do, the range that we’re looking for in adults is 10 degrees or more within this specific test. And what’s the average that you get one or two one or two degrees? Really? Yeah. And even for kids like have nine, ten, eleven year old kids their mobility is worse than a lot of adults. And I think it just comes down to too much time, I don’t know, at the desk or just like watching videos on their phone and just from that hunch position. And so kids should not have that that bad a mobility. They should be very, very loose and mobile. So and it just comes down to one, I think keeping better posture throughout the day and being aware of it. And I mean, I’m guilty of that, too. I think I probably hunch a lot way too much. But I think it also comes down to just doing some basic mobility

exercises before after training, getting on the foam roller, doing like it’s almost a streamlined stretch with the foam roller in the top half of your back up around the shoulder blades and and doing a streamlined stretch rolling back and forth that way. And also just getting a trigger point ball or a lacrosse ball and just getting stuck into your upper traps, your scapulas as well. And just loosening up through there, kind of beating yourself up with it. And finding those really sore points because that kind of mobility. I’ve seen a direct correlation in someone’s swim speed.

Once they, yeah, with that sort of mobility, like for me, I I’m normally around 20 to 25 degrees with this test that we do. And when I started doing triathlons a year ago, my mobility was it went down to about 15 degrees because I was riding so much I was running and I just didn’t have the same sort of upper thoracic mobility. And until I got back on top of my stretching, my swim times were about two seconds slower per 100 with that reduction in upper thoracic mobility. And and I know that because I’ve swum so much. I know roughly where my times would be. And I just couldn’t put a couldn’t put my finger on it. Why my times had had slowed down the last couple of weeks. And and then I saw I’m feeling pretty tight through the shoulders. Tested it. So it was way off from what I’d normally be. And then I just got back on top of the foam roller and the mobility and the trigger point ball work. And it took me probably a week to get back there.

But then it was fine again. But but I’ve seen that direct correlation in quite a few people. There’s also a company here called IntelliSkins. And it actually, you know, they make shirts and bras that actually pull your shoulders back. And they’re they’re sports oriented. I think they market to surfers, golfers. But when you look at a lot of different sports across the board, you know, you really do need that mobility. And so and it is something I think we lose when we age. So it’s a I think those are great exercises that you do. And even being able to monitor yourself is really important. Yeah. And there’s two coaches who who I work with. And they’ve both been on the Australian swim team. And they haven’t competed at that level for quite a few years. But in that test, they’re both still around 40 to 45 degrees. And I think you’d find that with the majority of elite elites from as they’ve all got that that range.

I’ll send you a video of the test that we do. Yeah, that’s so interesting. There’s there’s a sort of seven or eight different ones that that a physio who I’ve worked with here in Melbourne, her name is Helen Walker. And she’s worked with the Australian swim team as a physio. And and she does this athlete screening with with all of them. And she’s looking for imbalances between each side of the body or a particular area that that swimmer might be tied in. Because often the imbalance can lead to injury or the particular area, the body that they’re tied in, can just it can hold them back from achieving the technique that they need to compete at that level. I’ll send you the video to all of those those tests because it’s it can be a good sort of marker to see if someone is not within that not able to get into the right range to achieve some of the stuff that they need to in their stroke to to do some of this stuff.

Oh, great. No, that’d be wonderful. What do you kind of look for? Like when someone comes to the swim lab where you are, do what’s the first thing you get them to do? And what do you look for to kind of break it down? The first thing I look for is I watch people walk down the hall and I look at their posture and I look at how they move to see if they move well. Because to me, especially for triathlon swimming, I’ve always said it’s like surf paddling and salsa dancing at the same time. So very often I’ll get somebody that’s really tight in their hip flexors, lower lumbar, IT band. So getting them to move or even up kick or do a navel swivel is really hard. So and then I try to go with what somebody’s doing right and what’s easy for them because I don’t feel like I’m going to totally be able to revamp someone. But there’s always something that people are doing right. Like even, you know, I’ll get runners come in

and they’re they’re rhythmic. They they can move. Sometimes they’re a little too controlled where they don’t need to be controlled like through the air. But I do try to look at what they’re doing right. And then a lot of times I’ll just use tools or drills to get them so they’re not thinking because the thinking sometimes can be a huge problem. And then, you know, they get in the swim and they’re actually thinking way too much and and not even remembering that they need to enjoy it and they’re doing it for fun. You know, most people aren’t going to make the Olympic team in their swim. And the whole point is to really remember why they’re doing it. And, you know, it’s a pretty much a celebration of their own fitness and their lifestyle and and to remember to enjoy themselves is really important. Yeah, I can relate to that. And I was I listened to an audio audio book last week. I can’t remember what it was, but one of the the premises of the part of this book

was the reason that people like to do do things. And it doesn’t matter what it is. Like you could all the thousands of different jobs there are out there or the thousands of different sports they could do. What people actually get satisfaction from is the positive feedback loop. So if for swimming, for example, it might be you make this slight change to what you’re doing in the recovery part of the stroke and you see your times get faster or it feels easier. And that positive feedback loop, well, I actually quite enjoy swimming and then you might change a different aspect of your stroke or you might change what you’re doing in your training and continuous positive feedback loop is what people actually enjoy. And so I was thinking about that and how it relates to the work that you do or the sport that you do. That for me, I think about the coaching I get a real kick out of whether it’s doing a podcast like this

and someone saying, I really enjoyed that podcast with any what you mentioned here helped me take five seconds off my 100 meter pace. And that’s what I really get a kick out of. And I think it’s the same thing for when I’m training in the pool is, I can see that I put in the hard work for a training session and I can say the results. So yeah, I really liked that approach to working with people where it’s not about, you may not be making the Olympic team, but it’s about you enjoying yourself, having fun with it and hopefully seeing some improvement as you go. Well, and I always call them opportunities for greatness. And when you’re young, you have a French test on Thursday and a track meet on Saturday, but the older you get, you really need to find those opportunities for greatness and by either entering something or working on your fitness. And I really think it helps keep people alive and feel that enjoyment of going after something.

Yeah, and I like the feeling of putting myself through some pain and suffering and kind of coming out the other end of it. That’s what I get a real kick out of. And in the last couple of weeks, we’ve been renovating our house at home and we’ve moved house and I’ve been looking after my son three days a week and traveling two days a week. So it’s been really busy and I’ve been lucky to have sort of one opportunity to push myself, either running or swimming. But that’s what I really sort of get a kick out of. And if I don’t get that kind of release, I kind of feel this pent-up energy that I need to get rid of. And I just need to, I think, physically exhaust myself at least once a week, if not sort of two or three times. And I think it comes from just starting at a young age and really enjoying that feeling of putting everything you’ve got into a training session or a set. And then I kind of get this calmness after that

where I can think clearer if something comes up, it doesn’t bother me as much. So that release is what gives me, I think, a calm of mind to work with. And things don’t affect me as much after that. Well, there are things, you can always take it back to science. And there is so much research now about how exercise does help your brain. It helps you think better, it helps you adjust better. And so I think we were really lucky to have had this as part of our lives growing up, that this is our normal. And I think, wow, that’s so amazing. They had to study what’s our normal, but we don’t feel normal when we don’t work out. We don’t think as well. Food, there was a, I was driving back from the mountains today and they did a study on how food actually does taste better if you work out. And I thought, how funny that they had to do a study on that, cause we’ve known that for a really long time. So I think that we should all just pretty much be grateful

that this is our quest and learning about things. And even, I love that I can talk to you on the other side of the world and I can learn and I can explore and then I can go back in the lab and analyze things or pull things off the internet. And it makes a world of much smaller place, but it also makes it a lot richer. Yeah, absolutely. It’s, we’re so lucky to be able to do this. And every time I do a podcast where I get to chat to you and the last guest I had on is a yoga teacher over in the States and he’s specifically working with swimmers and every time I get to chat with someone and I get some new ideas and new thoughts and a different perspective on how people can improve or how you can teach, it really sort of, it fires me up and gives me that burst of motivation and energy to think like, oh okay, how can I do things better? How can I, what tools can I add to my toolkit when I’m working with someone? And just wouldn’t have had this opportunity

had it not, had it been probably 10 or 15 years ago just because of being able to use the internet, being able to meet people like you. And I mean, we caught up in April last year where I got to come meet you at the swim labs and do a session with you, which was awesome. And I’m just really grateful that we’re able to do this and sort of pull from so many different coaches and knowledge bases and I guess form our own opinions of how teaching swimming should be done. And I also think that there’s so much that we can take from an elite level and then give to the mainstream. Like when people say, I’m afraid of open water and I say, well, you should be afraid of open water. There’s a lot of things that can happen and you need that heightened awareness. That being said, you still need to appreciate it, but I always say it’s like you, before a race, you have a white horse and a black horse and the black horse is your fears and your anxiety

and your nerves and the white horse is your dreams and your aspirations and your goals. And it’s like a stand up Roman gladiator. You wanna harness both horses, and let them pull you. And I think sometimes by people doing races and trying to get better at whatever sport it is, they can learn a lot about themselves. So in the early 1800s, there was a saying that really gets my goat. And you see now in horse races, they let the horse walk out with their friend because it relaxes the horse. But they actually used to put goats in the stall in before races, because they found the horse would sleep really well if they had a calming goat in there. And then the night before races, people would go around and steal goats so their horse would be really upset. So, telling people like to find what is their calming goat and what really centers them, whether it’s friends or family is really important. So I think sometimes a journey we think is total technique,

but it becomes a lot deeper than that. Oh, absolutely. And you really start to realize that when you put yourself through 6, 12, 24 months of grueling training. And like I think about when I was training for the Ironman, there was like I just, some of the training I put myself through, I think I’ve done very similar stuff as a swimmer, but it was a different sport. And I was getting frustrated that I was not that good at riding and was very annoyed that I wasn’t as quick as I would have liked to have been. But then once you take that, but you just keep going with it, keep training. For me, it’s like you don’t realize who you are until you actually put yourself through some times where you do start to feel a bit of pain or you might feel scared like you would in the open water. It’s those sort of real challenging times that you get to realize how good the good times are. You can’t have the light without the darkness.

And I think sports are a fairly good environment to do that in, because it is generally a pretty safe environment to test yourself as a person and your character. But you can really sort of go down a pretty dark hole as well, but not to the point where you’re going to lose your life with it. So that’s why I like the environment of being able to do that in sport. Oh, definitely. And what’s next for you? Are you training for anything at the moment or it’s summer there, so it’s probably the season for open water swimming? Yeah, so it’s summer. I have some work opportunities coming up. And so it’s been an interesting thing to step out of myself and go, wow, if I take and do some of these things, you know, I’ll lose some of my training, but I think what I get from helping other people is so, gives me so much more meaning than my next event.

So I don’t really have that much on the forefront as far as personally, but I do have some opportunities coming up, working with some people that I’m pretty excited about. Awesome. Looking forward to hearing about those in the future. You sound a bit secretive about those. So I’ll let them, I’ll let that hang. Well, I just, I don’t, I always am afraid before they happen to talk about things before they happen. So, yeah. No, I’m on the same page with you. So, well, it’s been great to have you on again. I, as you know, I love having you on as a guest and I’d like to get back to the States next year. So if I do, I’ll definitely get in contact and catch up again. Okay. Well, thank you. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. And yeah, no doubt you’ll be back on again and we’ll keep in touch. Thanks, Bretton. 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.