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 Tim Denier and Tim came highly recommended from a previous guest which you may have heard. Mark Salaby who completed the Ocean 7 has made a doco about it as well called Don’t Be Pray which I highly recommend seeing if you haven’t seen it and Tim you worked very closely with Mark with the Ocean 7 Swims and he said you’ve got to get Tim on the podcast. He’s so he said he doesn’t think you know how good you are at what you do basically. So I thought it’d be great to get you on and just talk marathon swimming swimming overall and as someone who has taken more than 250 people across the channel you and your team. I think there’s a lot that we can learn from that. So welcome to

the podcast. Thanks, Brenton. Thanks for having me. So you’ve just got back from some from a trip to Croatia multiple camps there with a lot of your marathon swimmers. We’re talking before the podcast you had some pretty solid days and solid weeks for those athletes. Can you talk a bit about what those camps were about? And then I guess some of the some of the swims and the tests that you put those guys through in order to be ready to swim some of these big marathon swims. Sure. So exactly what you just said we just come back from three one week back to back back to back camps. We took about 50 athletes over and yet training in the open water is obviously essential. We had to two hour swims minimum every day and also included was the six hour swims on at least one of those per week. Additionally, we did the training in the pool. So we have a long course pool over there which we train in. It’s just it’s just a wave

just getting a huge amount of volume in so many people when they’re coming into these big marathon swims they they do very well in terms of fitting their training within their work and their life and their family balance but actually you need a week they need a week where it’s just completely focused and we call it a springboard into like the main event of the of the summer. So yet 27 hours of training my fastest athletes are doing 18 up to 100 K some people are going 60 K that’s of course it’s fine but over 27 hours of training you can get a you can get a big number it absolutely and how far out from a from a mouth on swim would you ideally like to hold a camp like this for a training week.

I mean a lot of these what are we in now we’re in June so this was in main June and a lot of it is the focused on the English channel which is predominantly July August September. That said with climate change seasons coming forward in the seasons going a bit longer so we’ve got to swim again in two weeks from now. So ideally I would say probably a month before that said some people are much further out a couple of people a little bit closer but if you’re going to get a hit of 80 K on your belt you need the time to recover after it. It’s not just getting the training and it’s getting the training and then the time to recover. I literally after my athletes were trained by training peaks after that and everybody goes on count see do nothing for the next seven days preferably 10 days literally just kick back and enjoy yourself because this is the springboard now we’ve got the recovery time and then it’s going to get big. So you also want to

hang out with your family and do something then then you know next week’s the time to do it but it’s it’s it’s an essential part of training which a lot of people and a lot of swimmers and I don’t mean this disrespectfully but a lot of amateur swimmers. They don’t want to do they feel like when they rest they feel like they’re not training and a lot of the time being a good coach is actually telling your athlete when to back off and went to hold back and it’s OK to take a day off and if you don’t feel great then that’s cool. Don’t don’t worry about it. You’re going to get some days which are good some days which are bad and some days which are awful and you’ve just kind of got to figure out as to how well your body is going to be reacting in those different circumstances. Too many people though train when they feel awful and there is a time to train when you feel awful if it’s just a mental thing and you’ve got to push through a block

but more often than not it’s it’s it’s an overload thing and then you just hold back and be sensible. You got you got to train smart. There’s no point just pushing on regardless with a camp like that where someone’s doing perhaps 80 to 100 case in a week. What percentage of that do you find says the physical benefit of putting the body through that versus the mental benefit they get from knowing that they can clock up some big case they can they can be in perhaps cold water for a long time like what where’s that split for you. Good question. I feel that you know it’s a bit like why is a six hour channel swimmer qualify six hours. You know do people benefit from doing multiple six hours or or not. Now I would argue no they don’t. I think it’s important to do some long swims so that you a you feel confident that you can do that be you feel confident like that your technique can hold see you can take cold acclimation for that period of time and

D nutritionally you can make tweaks and changes that every single training session has got to have a point to it and I make very very clear that we’ve got to have a point and we’ve got to really be focusing on that point in these swims. Now if he’s just getting in for the hell of it and churning out junk mileage I’m not a big fan at all. I’m really not I’ve often said to people I’d rather you go and do an hour and a half lactate threshold working on two hundred and four hundreds rather than going around Dover Harbor for five or six hours. I literally would because a lot of these swims especially when their title swims the speed is the is the limiting factor speed is the reason why people succeed or fail much more than cold for example and there’s we can get on a bit later but you’re not going to get huge amounts of benefit of just swimming in cold water for five six seven hours repeatedly after six two minute dips you’re

going to have your cold shot responses only going to be a certain amount of additional benefit by repeated dips. So what I really want is people to be focusing on on what it is exactly that they’re changing what they’re training for now that can certainly be in the head for sure but once you’ve kind of broken through a three hour or a four hour or a five hour then you’ve got to start thinking about right now it’s pace I’ve got a breakthrough now I’ve got to get down to I like a set of ten four hundreds and seeing what that best average and just seeing what you can take over that on and then just trying to get the cycle down as as much as we can even down to I have a nice one off five two hundreds of a three forty five and seeing and just keeping that consistent through the whole block through the whole year eighteen months whatever or it could be off four fifteen or it could be off four thirty whatever works that athlete and then just

seeing what that five reps averages throughout the whole of training and if it’s not going down if it’s not improving in in average rep and yet the training block says it should be then I have to look at what I’m changing what I’m doing wrong in their training or if there’s something happening like is work stressful or do they go on a big night out the night before or are they eating the wrong stuff drunk the wrong stuff is there stress going on at home you know what’s what’s the reason so I mean I’ve kind of moved on from your original conversation your original question Brenton but for me they’re in equal part in terms of of physical benefit and mental benefit but it changes as you go through the plan everything constantly changes as to where the focus is going to be sometimes it’s on physical are we just getting faster are we getting tougher more robust in the water can we take a bit more of a whack from the the wind and

the waves and the surf or whatever mentally are we able to push a little bit harder emotionally can they actually take it when stuff is actually getting a little bit more difficult it kind of depends on the situation and with a lot of your marathons from as a you obviously that fitness and pace like very important there are you looking at their technique as well like what sort of balance do you try and find there with them 100% so we definitely we always film when we’re around camp by trying to do some filming as well when we’re just in our squad sessions in London from time to time techniques super super super important but I do feel a lot of time people get too hung up on technique there are so many ways to get faster and to improve and just by drilling and drilling and drilling and drilling and drilling is not going to get you quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker is you’re going to get faster by improving tech and working on drills

then work on your conditioning then your SNC then your nutrition improve your sleep levels your phone rolling massage osteopathy mental side there are all these different ways to improve and to get quicker rather than just doing a ton of tech I do kind of look at the you may well love this the moneyball approach and and how through that film how how they managed to really get every single marginal gain as they possibly can I’m very data driven and I’m very analytical and I observe a lot and analyze a lot sometimes I don’t say everything that I observe and I analyze but I certainly noted all down I’m very very data driven so from doing all that I’m trying to look at all these different marginal gains and all these different ways that we can possibly possibly get something quicker if there is something technically wrong then great I embrace it because there’s an old coach of mine he’s not that old but there’s a coach of mine back back in

my early years he said Tim we want people to have faults in their swimming we want errors we want problems and the reason why is so that when we analyze it it’s easier for us as coaches to go there’s the problem let’s fix that boom we’ve got a big gain immediately you know you want an athlete to be working fast but with some problems in there and then make some crazy changes the harder thing is when you’ve got a perfect tech and they’re not quite moving as quickly as you feel that should be that happens very rarely those I’m sure you’re aware of that but yeah so quite a lot of time it can be just tweaking something like hand entry is going in and hand entry is going in and it’s horizontal when it’s in but then as they roll in order to breathe the shoulders naturally dropping but the hand is still staying high and so you’re just naturally getting a little bit of an incline because they’ve gone in and they’ve got to realize it’s got

to go in and still start leaning into the initiation of catch as they’re rolling into the into the breath or even just into the extension and it’s just little tweaks like that that actually just just taking that entry just about two centimetres deeper will actually keep everything more aligned when the wind on the rotation into the extension so you have to be really you know I do drive sometimes quite I’m quite anal in being very particular early vertical forearm is something which I’m all over with my guys and you know it’s something which we were which we were coached so much when I was a kid our coach made us just lean over the lame ropes would be flat and then the lame ropes would be there and we just had to lean over and just go like that the whole time and it was just graining it in as a six seven eight nine year old you know that that is that’s that’s about position the whole time that you’ve got to try and get into now it doesn’t matter if you

can’t get into it you’ve got to know where it is you’ve got to try and target getting into if you don’t have any idea as to what the ultimate game aim sorry is then there’s no way you’re going to be able to prefer that tech so there’s a lot of pro athletes and videos of how they’re swimming and say look this is this is where we’re wanting to get to this is you I know it’s a bit unfair comparing you to in Thorpe on a front angle I know it’s been unfair but that’s what he’s doing he’s got a Ben and 90 Phelps is 110 Becky Allentons 120 you know that’s what we’re looking at there and you’re at like 170 165 170 180 we’ve got to put it up a bit we’ve got to this is where we’ve got to target and then when you sit when they see the target then it’s a lot a lot easier to pull it back and they can see it it’s such a I think a powerful way to get any technique point across is to give them what’s trying to find someone who’s maybe

similar to how they would swim their natural sort of style and then showing them that footage and then they can visualize themselves swing what they need to do and obviously having that side by side is so powerful for people I think for me in clinics where we we essentially do that it’s like for people that just kind of clicks from this like okay I now I understand what I actually look like in the water because first I had no idea so seeing that footage and then having that ideal sort of stroke it just helps them move towards it a lot quicker so it’s such a powerful way to do it. You’ve got to really show what the target is from an Olympic standpoint then say but you may not be able to get into that but this is how you can get into the best possible position a lot of people it comes down to shoulder flexibility yeah and it’s just like you’re just never going to be able to do that so it’s okay just go a little bit deeper

if the target is the early vertical forearm then let’s work on that if it means you have to go a bit deeper you have to go a bit deeper that’s fine but we’ve got to get vertical and so that’s kind of like in the head is as long as a vertical Tim’s happy yeah yeah and you’ve like you’ve had a huge success rate with getting people across channels and straights we’ve talked about a few of those things just in terms of the planning and the training and the technique what other aspects of the way that you like to to run things and prepare people do you think helps with that high success rate. Okay I’m very honest with people I never ever lie like this is absolutely what is what is going to happen you have the classic train for the worst hope for the best except where you get and we added that except where you get on to on to the end of it because everybody wants to go out in that perfect day I would say that arguably pretty much

now this would be controversial I was going to say pretty much okay pretty much anyone who’s training for distance and wants to swim in this channel can swim in this channel when the date is utterly perfect I’m talking the nepiest of neat tides zero wind that happens like once maybe twice a season if that okay so you have to just accept the day there are so many pilots who want to just go out and swims and have lots of swimmers and that’s great so you’ll go out on a swimmable day but it won’t necessarily be a perfect day but you know you just got to make sure that everybody understands what what could happen and I feel that when you keep people’s anxiety low that is when you get the most benefit out of out of an athlete that’s when you can realize most of their potential if they are anxious at any point then that is going to massively translate into their swim they’re going to start a panic internal blood pressure will go up

they are going to probably start to spin their arms more and so power is going to go even worse they’re just going to slip the water making it to just getting wheel spin when they start lifting a little bit too high so and they think that they’ve lost it and you see this so many times so many times is you’ve just got to keep people calm and so by keeping them calm you explain to them way before all the things that can go wrong and so they understand the strategies that we have on the boat that if this happens this is what we’re going to do to solve it and then what happens is they don’t have to worry about it they don’t have to think about it they don’t have to spend mental energy trying to solve for it because they know that we’re on the boat doing that and obviously when you’re on the boat looking down at a swimmer we’ve got the instruments I can see the red lines the green line our speed over ground our course over ground I can see where we’re going

I’ve got all the data in front of me I can see my athlete down there I know exactly what they’ve taken from my kit bag that I can give them a lift I can solve the problem far more easily than they’re ever going to be able to solve it so it’s important that they understand all they’ve got to do is just stay relaxed if I tell them they’re good we’re still on track we’re all right then they’re good we’re still on track and we are still all right but if I tell them I need an extra 5% I need an extra 5% and again like I said before I’m not going to lie so they have that confidence and there’s no point line because I might be working with an athlete in the English Channel here and then they go on and work with me in Sugaru, Cookstra, Catalina, Moloko whatever and if they know when it hit the fan Tim was lying to me then they’re not going to have that trust but all the other swims which hopefully will end up doing so trust in that athlete-coach

relationship is crucial it’s absolutely crucial it’s the pillar as to what got Mark Saabi through his Ocean 7 was actually he didn’t try and fix the problems all the time which is quite good because normally he is one of those blokes that would do that but actually he was able to just delegate well not just delegate because it wasn’t his choice but he was able to just accept right that’s what you do this is what I do let’s just look after each other and we’ll be alright

and the last thing you want as a swimmer is thinking whether or not has the person on the boat said okay we got 5k to go but you know they have a tendency to kind of bend the truth a little bit because they want to try and either pump me up or feel like I’m closer when in reality it’s like 8k to go it’s like that’s the last thing you want as a swimmer and that obviously increases anxiety so I think that truth that honesty is such a good approach and then that’s right people will relax so much more they know they know that you don’t have the truth there was a swim out was it last year or year before I can remember there were 11 boats went out to sea and only 3 boats got over and there were 3 that Matt Niels and I were on the 3 red top boats and that was one of the parts I hate to use the p-word so I’m not going to use it but I was very proud of the boys on that one there you go use it because what we’ve done with those 3 swims

was those swimmers in the water trusted us implicitly to make the right calls at the right time and that I’m honest because I know some of the people that didn’t make it that day and they’re decent swimmers they’re decent swimmers it just didn’t click for them on that particular day perhaps because they didn’t fully understand I’m not going to say trust but they probably didn’t even fully understand I mean it was pretty awful and it was night was falling but there’s one guy pulled out 400 metres past the cap you know he went past it one way went past it another way absolutely he was going to get in absolutely he was going to get in but when you go down and then they see then they see the lighthouse the other way and they think I’ve blown it but actually what I’ve got is I’ve got a ton of different tracks which are printed out and plotted out and I’ve written the analysis next to all of those different tracks as to if your track is like this

this this this this then this is what’s happening in those different scenarios and there’s about 8 or 9 different options and so people have read those through our document on manual like way before so they understand all that positioning they understand what the ZC2 means the marker boy that splits the northeast shipping lane from the French and Schubert as it’s 5 kilometres 3 miles from France they understand what that is they understand when they look up at me at the boat and they say Tim where am I and an observer or show up you’re in the English channel you know I’m like shut up right you’re paid to observe but the point is is that I say right we’re dropping down we’re in the northeast shipping lane we’re about half a mile west of ZC2 in the next 10 minutes we’re going to keep dropping down on the edge for another hour 30 hour 45 we’re then going to drop underneath we will be within French and Schubert easily we’ll have a period of slack probably

not not that much and then we’re going to go back up and we’re going to have that saxophone effect we’ll try and knock in just south of the cap and if not we’re going to knock just over the top and land and land maybe just before the whistle if all that goes according to plan you probably possibly got four hours but who knows but that’s your position you’re on track we’re perfectly okay absolutely everything’s fine just keep doing what you’re doing we’re good we’re getting it and then like fine done got it whereas other people who haven’t understood all those possibilities and options previously anxiety does creep in and I know it because I’ve seen it before so that’s why now I don’t believe in the look just keep them in the dark and just tell them just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming no I don’t I just don’t knowledge helps too much knowledge of course is not useful but I think a lot of knowledge when they’re also

prepared to give over the response and give over the solving any potential issues it’s it’s it’s super key but that’s where the athlete coach relationship really really kicks in that’s such an interesting like answer to that to that question of why you feel like you’ve had such good success with your with your swimmers but it makes so much sense when you when you look at it that way and as a swimmer like swimmers they have goals they need to have goals they need to kind of know what they’re doing and I think just that clarity around it look and if plans change they can adapt but knowing okay we’ve got whatever 10k to go this is what’s happening like swimmers love that they they just they need a mission and then they can they can show it they do but also Brent and they need they need they need they need a reason they need a purpose and of course this is you know a big you know people call it the why but I think that a lot

of people get quite hungry the number of people that will send me an email or call me up and say look I’ve always wanted to do the English Channel I want to do it for this charity I’m good at endurance events I can take the cold and like great I’m glad you can do all that because that’s kind of like the starting position but what I don’t want people to do is to get in the water the same right I’m raising money for this charity because of some some some so or I’m doing this for my kids or I’m doing this to what I want them to do is I want them to do it for themselves at the very start and you know I’ve thought this for years but I actually it was during this six-hour swim on just last week when I was just sitting down I saw it all the feeds out Matt was out on the boat with them they were going loops on this one particular swim and I thought I’m actually going to write down what I’ve had in my head on this one thing and just try and really

really really pin down the phrase and the phrase which I came up with I’ll probably forget it now but the reason why you start is for yourself but the reason why you’ve finished is probably most likely for someone else or something else because what you want is you don’t want to go into these events where all your cards are on the table I’m doing this because a family member started cancer and I’m doing it in their memory because when it all goes wrong where else do you have to draw on you’ve already used everything where else can you go I’m still doing it for so and so I’m still doing it for my kids and stuff you’ve got to start off for yourself because if you don’t want to do it then if you want to do it for you then go and do something else that you do want to do go and climb a mountain or go and do an Ironman or go and do something else you’ve got to do this the start because the training so hard it’s you that’s got to get in the water

and commit when it’s cold and then get out of bed and go and do it you’ve got to do it for you to start then when the shit it’s the fan in the middle then you start drawing on your emotion then you start drawing on right I’m doing this for my mum I’m doing this for me it’s easy if I was going to do it again I’d be doing it for my daughter 100% like even when I’m in training and it’s hard and somebody’s buying I picture her looking at me in the stands going seriously dance that the best you got and I mean it’s probably a bit of a fault maybe it says something more about me and my mental but but 100% and like just that image she just doesn’t even say it just that image is enough to just push me for sure but the reason I got in at training that night wasn’t because of my 8 year old it was because I wanted to get in and start and so you’ve got to start for you but you’ll probably end up finishing for a different reason

absolutely yeah yeah that’s like has that come from having people inquire or even maybe like start preparing for one of these swims where you can just tell that deep down they are not interested in doing it but they’ve thought I’ve got to do something challenging in memory of this person yes so they just haven’t got a clue what’s involved I haven’t got a clue many people want to love the idea of being a channel swimmer but actually when it comes down to it they don’t really want to go through everything that’s involved and everything that is involved is not that one day it is the thousands of hours leading up to it I, we at Red Top, Matt, Niels all of our coach we know pretty much before we start whether we’re going to get over or not and if I don’t think we are, we’re not basically we’re not going to see because there’s no point just taking taking cash off somebody if you know that it’s not going to happen so we have the conversation with him in February

March and say look maybe we need to turn it into relay let’s put it off another year and also you know certainly with the English channel I work with some amazing pilots they’re all amazing the ones that we work with for so long we’ve got a huge amount of loyalty with those guys they know that we know what we’re talking about we know that they know what they’re talking about it makes a perfect team and so yeah we’ll call up the pilot and say I’ve got Brenton coming up tomorrow he is a 4.6 km an hour swimmer I’m picking you up here Brenton I don’t know if you can hold that for an hour and he’s this he breathes to this side feeding strategies on this feeding time is going to be about this this is what I feel looking at whether what are your thoughts what are your times in terms of looking at high when would you want to are you happy blah blah blah and and it’s that it makes the pilots job easier when they know that they’ve got

an athlete coming on the boat who’s prepared and understands what’s going on it just makes the job so much easier hmm that’s good and like you’ve obviously coached for a long time we’re talking beforehand you started around 2007 with your swim coaching but previous to that like you’ve done this channel yourself you’ve been around the pool for a long time in that time what comes to mind for you of perhaps philosophies or ideas that have evolved for you from where you first started coaching to where you are now and you look back at maybe some of those objectives you had and go I was really wrong on that because I know I’ve certainly had a few in my time coaching I look back at some of the things I was teaching when I first started and I just had no idea I was very fresh I was very green to but yeah that changes over time obviously with more experience new nutrition for sure change masterfully for sure and now like what we do we have

we have kind of like a starting position and then we give people that starting position we rotate through four or five different feeds and then figure out what works for them and figures out what tastes work for them or don’t work for them and then we just keep running through from that and so nutrition I’d say is probably the biggest the biggest change over the last two decades for sure but equally periodization I think that I think that I went a little bit low on volume but higher on intensity when I was personally trained I still like that but now what I’m able to do is to look more at whether an athlete is more of a lack whether they can create lactate or not create lactate if they can create lactate then I want to put them and they’re very good sprinters then I want to kind of keep pushing them I want to keep pushing them more onto the LSD training more kind of longer slower distance to push that lactate curve a bit more to the

bit more to the right if they can’t create lactate then I want them to do more sprint based work in order to generate more and then be able to then in the program hold it so it’s being more it’s understanding that not one size fits all is a bespoke approach and that bespoke approach is not just on nutrition but it’s also on on what type of athlete you’ve got my sister-in-law for example Leander Cave won the Ironman World Championship 2017 World Championship back in 2012 and she cannot create very much lactate which is why she’s a perfect open water and perfect distance ultra endurance marathon etc athlete that sounds a bit unfair because she is also was like my wife and her were excellent swimmers when they were kids but she didn’t have like a gear and so but she could just go hard and just go hard forever so a couple of days before Kona World Championships she’s there doing like 2100 soft like a 130 cycle and I’m looking at it thinking

it’s totally the right thing for her to do because you can’t create lactate you’ve got other athletes then copying her and they’re blowing up when it comes to race and it’s not just good race but it’s also because they were very good at creating lactate whereas what she couldn’t do was that so she had to just keep on even that close to the finish that close to the start line sorry she’s still having to remind her body you know we’ve got to get some movement we’ve got to get some stuff flowing here and it’s having that ability to test people see what they do on a sprint I want people to go max effort let me know what the 100 time is and then go 10100 the cycle time is that’s going to give you so much data so much information as to what is going on with them physiologically right off the bat if they can they can only sit on 145s per 100 but they can go 103 for 103 style yeah I know exactly what what I need to be doing but equally

if they can go 140s but they can only go like 130 max effort again I know where I need to be training and it’s two different two different strategies I guess at some point we should also touch on the doco as well at some point else Mark will be like Tim you need to plug it yeah that was such a good they did such a good job with that film it was very very moving yeah so good yeah Mark came down have you seen Two Swimmers which is my first one no I haven’t Swimmers.co.uk TWA Swimmers.co.uk it’s just a website but you can screen that and that was basically created by Steve my friend at university and he filmed it and edited it and that was like his springboard into his career and he basically wanted to create something for Channel 4 docs which is you just want to create a four minute piece and then it would get uploaded and then people would vote and whatever so he followed me trained me into some of my training and then he additionally

came out on the boat on the date and he got as you’ve seen he got the money shot if you like Mark passing away and he realised that from that he he couldn’t do a four minute piece he had to do it more justice he created a half hour piece he was sold to terrestrial here in 607 606 just before Red Top started I’m sure and then then roll forward to all of this Jeff had got all the filming done all the interviews done and I spoke with Mark he said look he’s going alright but just getting frustrated he can’t find the narrative as well look my friend Steve he did mine he’s now an Emmy award winning editor and he’s married an Aussie and they I can connect Jeff and Steve so basically connected them and Steve just ran with it found the narrative and said right let’s do Mark Tim and Steve monotone is the three central characters and then the interviews will bring in will be the athletes did a swim with Mark so three for Gibraltar

and then Joe obviously for Cook Straight and so that was how he then they then filmed it so there’s so much footage which went over a hundred hour footage so how did you get a hundred hours of footage into a 90 minute piece anyway such a such a skill to be able to find the narrative cut down that footage and just type like I can’t even I wouldn’t know where to start with that that’s why they do that and we do this exactly right yeah yeah and they could probably look at what you do and they appreciate that for what it is and then I couldn’t I couldn’t do that so yeah let’s just stick to what we’re good at hey

now in terms of yourself being a swimmer and still hitting the pool what how important do you find it find for you that still keeping connected with the water and having that experience swimming the channel and doing long swims how how important is that for you to be able to then relate to your swimmers and transfer that knowledge that’s interesting and I say that’s interesting because I’m not really training specifically for an individual event at the moment but I think it’s very important to to stay connected and I think it’s very I think it’s much easier to get that that connection that trust that we talked about earlier with your athletes when they do see that you’ve done some stuff and also that you’re still you know might not be a lot people call me 10 minute 10 because I get in at the last 10 minutes of the training session and just jump in and push out a little bit and and open up and that’s it and yeah fine I’ll take it I don’t care

but I because it’s important that they see that I’m still getting in from time to time I’m still working hard but I’m still I’m still getting in the water and I do I do train when I’m when I’m at home when I’m able to I have a membership here and I’m able to get in and train but it’s difficult when you’re not it’s difficult to motivate when you don’t have something specific to train for other than as I keep keep saying my wife and I keep saying a lot you know it’s harder every single time you come back out of retirement it’s easier to stay ticking over rather than going down and then trying to get back up again and so yeah I do have some small goals which which have been hampered through injury over the last couple of years but I think I think I think I can probably link in something actually to what you’re saying here in terms of the relevance and how it reflects on the on the on the swimmer I used to it’s having that trust and having that

rapport and having that connection with your athlete that’s so important I used to feel like four five six years ago I had this story which I had in my head which I’d seen and it was the donkey that was how does the farmer make the donkey move faster does he give him a carrot to encourage him to walk faster or does he beat him with a stick to also encourage him but in a different way to move faster now different athletes require the carrot and a stick at different times some require just carrot some just stick some depending on the moment but it was about three years ago that I realized at the middle of the channel that actually there was a third way to make the donkey walk faster and that was actually to when everything went wrong right out there in the channel I looked down and I reminded my athlete once upon a time I was also a donkey I’ve had those shoulder injuries I’ve been scared of the dark I’ve worried about the sharks

and the jellyfish I had the GI issues I’ve considered pulling out perhaps because I thought I wasn’t in the position that I was in and also I thought you know is this just maybe not my day I started thinking up excuses as to why could justifiably could get out the water and so when your athlete looks up at you when you’re looking down at them with that level of empathy and they know that you know Tim hasn’t done anything really worth a mention in the water since probably Gibraltar in 2014 but he’s done a lot of stuff before then and he’s done seen a lot of stuff on the water underneath him in all the years since then so when they see that and they talk to me like that it gives them a level of confidence it’s not that I’m telling them to be a carrot or the stick but it’s telling them that I get it and I’m not going to lie to you you’re looking up at me and you’re growing up and you’re telling me that you feel shit yes you do feel shit

I get it I really do get it but it’s going to pass and I’m going to help you through it it’s going to pass the tide is going to turn the wind is going to drop the sun is going to come up it’s going to be alright it’s not going to be fun between now and the time that everything is alright but it will get alright at some point and there’s that difference between we are uncomfortable at the moment very uncomfortable at the moment but we’re not dying so we can keep going if we get to that point then I’ll pull you out but at the moment we’re good I had a guy last year in Catalina he started and you’ll probably know from Catalina you started somewhere between Tempium and Midnight and we were going in the end of September we we’d actually had a juvenile great white shark attack in one of our swimmers the night before and I was this night so there’s stuff going through everybody’s head everybody’s head not just a swim in the water believe me

stuff going through everybody’s head and he started feeling bad an hour and a half in and started feeling nauseous this guy’s an excellent swimmer he’s an excellent swimmer and I was just trying to think of all the different things that I could change nutritionally to give him change like this and he said look at the end of the day it’s shit when we’ve been going about two or three more hours we’re trying to solve for this problem I said look it’s not good I get it I get it this is that moment that we’ve trained for but we hope never would happen well it’s happening it’s happening just own it it’s happening all we’ve got to do is actually just get to daylight you don’t have to think about getting to the mainland if you get to dawn you will definitely get to the mainland just get to dawn everything will be better when you get to dawn okay okay okay and I finally resolved it I finally resolved it by doing a combination of things

and the main thing that happened was the acid reflux settlers and I had some stuff in my bag because I took over the year before Harrison Haynes I called Cross the English Channel Backstrike and he would get a lot of reflux because he did a lot obviously he did all of it on his back and so I had some of that some of that medication still in my toolkit and I gave that to Sean and boom it was a game changer so it’s just that was a little bit of luck right that I had that there I’m pretty confident that we’d have found a way we’d have solved a way alternatively a different way to get him across if I hadn’t had those in my toolkit but whatever I did, he took, he loved them and he asked for a repeat prescription next feed and a repeat prescription the following like about an hour later and that was it and then he was good and then he got through to dawn and then he went through and he successfully swam Catalina so it’s having that empathy

having that understanding that look there’s A to B right but it’s rarely a straight line in terms of our performance I’m not talking about swim track I’m talking about our performance but it doesn’t really matter about this as long as we get to this we want to be safe, we want to be successful if you have a good time great if you don’t really care as long as we’ve been safe and we’ve been successful like I said to people on this last one somebody said something about well what if I’m look a lot of people want to enjoy the journey and I’m like the journey it’s all about the destination so long as you get there it doesn’t really matter how you got there so long as you are safe then you’re successful if you want to go on a swim that you definitely want to enjoy of course we always go out hoping we’re going to enjoy swimming Catalina English of course we want to enjoy it but if we don’t we’re not going to get out just because we’re not enjoying it

besides it makes a better story doesn’t it that’s right so you can’t I guess say to people all the time it’s very difficult to do 12 hours of anything without the becoming some kind of a problem if you try and sleep for 12 hours you’re going to be woken up by the dog or you need the toilet or the dustman or whatever it’s almost impossible to do anything perfectly for 12 hours so you’ve got to understand that there are going to be peaks troughs, pitfalls, problems issues stuff we’ve planned for, stuff we haven’t planned for it doesn’t matter just do your swim bang your feet down, crack on and we’ll fix everything else that needs fixing from the boat if you do that and you trust in just me or my boys but it’s the pilot and it’s the whole concept I absolutely believe to understand the channel that that I was Tour de France team equivalent and you know the main guy gets all the accolade but he needs three hill climbers, two sprinters

three domestics, the massage, the engineers team manager, strategist all the massage, all the rest of it and I honestly believed in mine that everybody put their name into a hat and Regin Ray pulled out pilots Steve pulled out filming my sister pulled out cons Lee pulled out feeding Mark pulled out coach Mike pulled out observer and I pulled out swimmer and that’s just the way it was and you just get your head down everyone’s got a job and it wasn’t me getting over it was us getting over when you have that mentality of it doesn’t matter what happens in the water, you’re not on your own everybody’s invested in this success so you have to collectively as a team figure out how we are all going to get over and that’s that’s very important to me I the so I was on the boat with Andy Donaldson he went down the upper River which is like northwestern Australia the first proper marathon swim I’ve been a part of at least on the boat there

so 28 degrees in the water you don’t have to battle tides or currents or anything like that like everything’s sort of pushing you down the river yet you’re still running into issues there was dehydration, the sun absolutely cooked him through the day he’d had massive couple days leading into it driving 4000km 30-40 hours in the car and that’s really quite good conditions for a 55km swim but even then you’re still sort of battling it and it doesn’t matter how perfectly you plan and prepare for it and it was just interesting for me being the first proper long distance from I’ve been a part of to see the emotions that someone goes through like the first 4km he’s stopping every 30 minutes and just going how good is this like the landscape was unreal and then a couple hours later in he’s dehydrated and he’s like pretty quiet and not enjoying the landscape as much but it’s a real journey that the entire crew goes through, everyone on the boat

Feeders, Andy, it’s a real experience and I think I don’t know if I’m sure you find this but I found that it really tends to bond and gel everyone who’s been a part of that journey, it bonds them together because they’ve seen what goes into it and they’ve had to figure stuff out along the way and it really makes you closer as a team. Yeah but that’s also the moment that you have to step back emotionally and figure out and look on it without the rose tinted glasses and if stuff’s going bad and he’s getting more and more and more dehydrated and he’s getting worse and worse and worse, you have to kind of forget the what it means to him the number of people that are watching on social media the money that’s been raised to charity the role model the generation he’s he’s inspiring and actually know when enough’s enough and that’s that is that’s the bit which I which I really like and I’m proud of today is that you know we don’t we don’t really

know when the moment is to pull somebody out I just know that when I see it I know it if that makes sense just you just get an idea of something’s changed and now’s that moment so yes the whole experience does gel people very much together you know I’ve made good friends with some support people on support crews sometimes they you know sometimes they’re knowledgeable about how that one particular athlete works sometimes they’re knowledgeable because they’ve done it themselves but more often or not they’re just super enthusiastic family and friends and that’s great but sometimes they’ll want to keep them in if I want to get the person out or if I want to get the person out I want to keep them in and you have to be very confident in your own analysis and discussion with the pilot as well when enough is enough but you know that’s experience isn’t it I always say that doing what we do is science until the minute we get wet and then once your swimmer is in the water

doing it becomes an art because it very rarely goes according to plan there’s still the data there there’s still the the nutrition going in but sometimes the nutrition that should go in and should work doesn’t work so what do we do then well we have to pivot and we have to solve for that problem just find a way I always remember in Catalina who was going wrong Mark was throwing up and he was nauseous from the fumes and he just fixed the problem to him I don’t know how fucking great in the dark I can’t really see what’s going on because you’re not telling me other than you don’t feel great we hadn’t figured out that he was chewing down on the exhaust pipe at the time you know it’s just but you just got to find a way you just got to somehow go into all the options and just keep observing and keep looking but that again just brought everybody even more together because you could see what was going on I’m liaising with the kayaker

discussing a bit with the pilot looking at other stuff going on with the observer there was a couple of other guys for support on the boat and then you just kind of figured out what was going on and then you’d solve for that problem accordingly but yeah it is it’s a great experience for a lot of people for some people it’s a horrendous experience because either they don’t like seeing their family friend their loved one going to the end of their tether and back or or an ant they’re feeling so violently all themselves through seasickness that they just do not want on that boat whatsoever people throwing up over the side before the swimmers even got in the water to start the swim that’s only a 25 minute chug around the corner to some for holding this channel and then these people have been lying on the deck of the boat for the entire swim and then they’ve got to get back it’s just it’s just the way it is it’s just the way it is but

I find it’s like the really interesting point about not being emotionally invested like having that having that hat on and just being objective about things I think it’s that’s one thing I’ve had to learn as a coach where you’re going to be the best coach if you don’t let your emotions get involved in decisions and it’s that like you know you probably don’t want to tell someone look it’s going to be you’re going to have to slug it out for four hours it’s going to suck you want to sugarcoat it but the best thing you can be is not emotional about it just be factual obviously you want the person to succeed and you might have a very close relationship with that person and you work with them for a year or more but for you as the coach you’ve just got to take that away in order to give them the best chance at succeeding 100% 100% you have to be objective you have to be logical rational pragmatic and you have to be clear in what it is that you’re telling them in terms of

the situation and the solution I cannot stand it in life in general when people come to me with a problem but they don’t offer I didn’t even care for it if I don’t want it but they don’t even attempt to give a potential solution and that people are looking up at me I know because they’ve told me I don’t, they say Tim I didn’t care how bad it was when you told me because I knew that you’ve got a solution for it and so long as they have that confidence that you can create a solution and preferably tell them what the solution is going to be tell them like keep doing what you’re doing stick on this position stay close to the boat let’s be nice and nice and quick with the feeding as quick as we can focus a little bit more on the tech as you get through these swims the tech goes a bit what happens more often than not Brenton is the rotation to the non-breathing side decreases so they’ll still get a good roll to the side they’re breathing

they stay very flat to the non-breathing side and so they get a little bit of finger drag a bit more hay make around the side definitely don’t get extension out the back which means they also don’t get extension at the front with the breathing on side so you just say focus on the tech look down a little bit more get a bit more rotation hip and shoulder through to the non-breathing side focus on finishing off at the back and then just put a little bit more power in when you get through to the next feed the tech it’s just a reminder that’s all it is it’s just a reminder of this is what this is what’s needed and then at the next feed you’re right I want you to give me just 5% more power just 5% and we’ve always said the most we will ever ask you for is 5% I will never do the hour of power which is what I’ve seen happen before I’m never going to ask you to sprint never all I’ll ever ask is 5% because 5% doable it’s achievable

any more than that you’re just going to get wheel spin they’re just going to they’re going to try and increase speed by spinning your arms and it just doesn’t work not when you’ve been swimming for 13-14 hours it just doesn’t work one thing you mentioned there was sometimes they just need to be reminded that piece of advice where obviously people have to be taught new things and all of that but a lot of times especially if it works on for a long time they’ve just got to be reminded and I think for me that’s as a coach it’s taken a lot of the I guess the pressure off with someone who you’ve worked with for a long time it’s like even the best athletes in the world sometimes just have to be reminded I interviewed Sam Short a couple of months ago and he said he lost the it was the world champs in the 400 free bar it was like 0.03 of a second or something because he sort of was lifting and throwing his head around on that last lap

sometimes the best swimmers in the world something as simple as that doesn’t matter what level you get to sometimes you just have to be reminded of the basics exactly I worked with a guy who came out on our last camp he’s a quick swimmer he’s going to degrade the channel this year he’s a fast and he’s also 23 which makes a big difference and he noticed like his head was bobbing a bit and it’s a bit like every time you’re moving really going fast you’re feeling great going into a turn just as you’re going you can’t just lift slightly drive your head down and into it because it feels bigger feels better, it feels faster you feel more powerful but it slows you down and I said why are you doing this? and he’s like just feels good in the moment and he’s like and even just in his swimming he just bobs just a little bit forward, don’t lift it too much a little bit of his freestyle is very good, he doesn’t quite come over the top, just a little bit more like that

because he’s so good at fly, 200 fly is his thing, he’s so good at the fly it’s just that angle with the fly is a little bit more of what his angle on the freestyle is coming into so I’m trying to kind of change his freestyle a little bit to be a bit more freestyle and a little less having a butterfly influence and it’s just reminding in those things just make those small small tweaks, it’s going back to money ball again it’s just pulling out just little bits here, small marginal gains and you know all you’ve got to do is just get to that position it’s so money ball, all you’ve got to do it’s just got to get on base it’s always got to do, you doesn’t care about the home run just get on base and that’s what I’m trying to do I’m just trying to get people to get on base I have been working with a couple of pro triathletes overseas just a bit of analysis and I jump on a call with them and there’s one guy who he said previously he was like back of the

back of the front pack a couple of years ago and he’s just been like third pack lately and he’s like I just don’t I don’t know why it is like technically like it doesn’t feel great but I’m just not sure why I’m third pack and after I’ve asked him a few questions he’s like yeah I don’t really like to draft I like to have my own space I just don’t like to draft so it’s like alright well let’s work on that that’s some low hanging fruit if you’re missing the front pack and so we just talked about how to get a bit more comfortable with others where to sit and he had a really good swim last race that he did and it’s just simple stuff but you know when you’re in it sometimes you don’t see it you need someone a bit more perspective and maybe even he knew it but he’s just like he needed someone else to tell him that and it sounds like with that athlete he might have known it he might have felt it but he’s just like no I need an outsider to just tell me

this is what you’re doing let’s fix that let’s cut that away exactly that but also as coaches sometimes we need that as well being on the boat I’ve looked down sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees you know as the expression goes and you look down and you’ll think like I can’t kind of figure out if I need to pull them out or if I can keep them in a bit longer can I keep them in are they going to make it the first question I say is look they’re going to make another 30 minutes probably another hour but are they going to make another six and if they’re not then what’s the point keeping them in for another one hour two hours just to prove a point the second thing is is that I look at them and think okay say we’re super close we’re a mile and a half off I had this one this one lady it’s probably about 10 years ago and I looked down I don’t think she looks good but I can’t quite see it I said to the guys look you guys watch her

I just want to go to the other side of the boat I just want to sort myself out I just want to recollect my thoughts I want to look out over there and I remember it perfectly some was going down it was coming through towards Wissom Bay we were about we probably two miles offshore a mile and a half offshore two miles offshore it was beautiful flat calm water and what happens around Wissom as it comes in French and short as you get these flocks of birds and they fly just basically about what seems like about half a meter above the surface of the water when it’s flat calm and I just remember just watching these beautiful birds just flying across I just say it’s this is just it is such a stunning place like when it’s beautiful it is beautiful and I thought when I walk back across this boat and I look down at my athlete I’m going to just know whether to keep her in or whether to take her out and I walk back across the boat and I look down

and I said get her out get her out now enough enough enough is enough we cannot put this woman through anymore that is enough we pulled her out we pulled her out she did pass out and she came up pretty fast but it’s scary and it’s not good and you just have to keep reminding yourself that you’re not infallible as a coach you can make mistakes and just because we’ve got a good record as you said before 250 EC swims we’ve got 350 ultra marathons or marathons worldwide

but you’re only as good as your last one and you’re only as good as your stats so you’ve got to keep on top of it and you cannot make mistakes and with this woman she wasn’t close to being a dramatic mistake but when you look down and you know and sometimes you need to just keep on reminding yourself that you need to take yourself away get yourself out of the picture for a minute then go back and then look at it with a fresh set of eyes and sometimes as well you’ll see Matt and Neil will be at sea as well and maybe back home and I’ll call them up or one of them will call me up and go this is a situation, you can see what my track is I’ve given them this I’m not getting that response, what do you reckon? and we’ll just troubleshoot it and they go have you tried this and this they go yeah good idea and then we’ll do something, we’ll just fix it up and sometimes you just need somebody who’s not even on the boat to give you a

look at that but again that comes down to trust again but that’s trust within a unit that’s not even right there in that moment they’re seeing it completely from the perspective of the information I’ve given them and looking at a dot on a screen yeah that’s right a bit of that separation can help kind of just that outside perspective absolutely and it sounds like the team you’ve built having just other people to bounce ideas off of to be able to share that knowledge like for me I’ve run camps for a long time and it’s put me in touch with a lot of great great coaches and great athletes and doing this podcast as well like I’ve learned so much today from you it’s like that sort of wealth of knowledge from people of thousands and thousands of hours of experience in marathons swimming or competitive swimming whatever it might be to me it’s so valuable to be able to have that because if I was just coaching on my own without any outside

input I think I would know about a quarter of the stuff I do today and that’s why I think it’s just so good to have those other people to bounce off of and it sounds like you’ve put together such a good team to be able to help people successfully complete these big marathon swims yeah you’re obviously right Brenton you can’t be so ego driven that you’re not prepared to keep learning you have to understand that you have to keep on looking and talking to people and learning and learning from the mistakes as well as the bits that do go well and yeah talking to people and also looking at different situations with different athletes sometimes somebody will come to the floor and say like I’ve got an allergy or something and I haven’t had that one before but now we pretty much come across everything that we ever want to come at sea you know now we’ve ticked off shark attacks in Molokai and Catalina last year that one’s done we don’t need to revisit that one

ever again there literally isn’t I would say there’s literally nothing that I haven’t seen at sea now even going down to death in my and without being flipping in my English Channel swim you know and understanding when stuff goes wrong when you’re at sea you are absolutely on your own you are absolutely on your own you are only as good as the people and the kit that you’ve got on the boat and there’s not a lot of kit on a boat if stuff goes through you have to be very aware all the time that that’s at the back of your mind and that everything has got to be as as safe as it can possibly be but you’re right don’t be too up yourself that you like God’s gift and this is my strategy and I’m not going to deviate from this plan you have to be prepared to learn from tons of different people keep talking to people and keep improving all the time just little bits little bits little bits actually one of the first things that I one of the first things I realised

that I was perhaps coaching wrong was when Trent Grimsie broke this channel record he another coach that I had learned a lot from she posted a video about his swim and he has a bit of a crossover kick which can be really quite efficient for long distance swimming provided it’s coming from the right place where someone’s not like over rotating or completely disconnected it can be fine to do it this crossover kick and I’d always thought no completely wrong thing like never you always just need to you shouldn’t cross over essentially but you look at some of the really good distances and some of them do it and so for me that was one of the first light bulb moments where it’s like hang on a second you need to question some of these beliefs that you’ve got and you’ve got to look at what the spectrum is of what the best swim is in the world do and just allow some of these things to perhaps play a part of people’s stroke if it’s there for the right reasons

and yeah that was one of the first things I remember when I was coaching career where I thought hang on a minute like you’re not you don’t know everything let’s start to peel back some of these layers and see what the truth actually is definitely it’s different strokes with different folks as I was taught and it’s not one size fits all it has to be bespoke approach on how you coach people in terms of tech some people just physically can’t get into the positions that you want them to get into and also when you want them to be conditioned through the periodization plans and nutritionally a good a good example of something similar to what you just said was actually when I swam next I took Pedestorichef across Gibraltar and we did some training swims and I swam next to him and I was basically just swam next to him because I wanted to have a look underwater at what he was actually doing and he goes in deep he goes in so deep

but for him it’s in a deep catch position he doesn’t just pull back he pulls back and lifts up and pulls right back past his hip so it was it was going in but it was like he gets his power from like a lift up it’s kind of launches him up and over the water and I was like I’d never seen that strike on on any athlete which I’ve analyzed underwater at pro level as well as amateur level and I was like you know this is this is that guy’s so powerful not just strong that guy’s so powerful and power is you know that power is a swimming is a dynamic sport we talk about strength is lifting a car power is flipping a car is putting in that energy putting in that increase in place and wow that guy’s got it you just there he holds in and you just see that which is what should be that acceleration underwater 99% of people in a public pool would decelerate in their underwater phase where is actually the put in the effort the catch and then

it’ll dribble out the back it’s got to be acceleration in the underwater phase and seeing some of these pro-summers like swimming next to next to Petter really really made that blinding the office to me blinding the office it’s so cool to at Emsack where I used to coach there was Mac Horton and Greg Paltranieri like the two like best distance from us in the world at the time and I just remember watching them go up and down the pool and you just you learn so much from seeing those elite swimmers especially at the whole squad of them you just see like what’s important and just how they move their bodies through the water this you can just take so much from that seeing it in person and I remember a couple years ago I filmed a guy Dan Smith who was on the Olympic team quite a few years back and I thought I’ve never seen someone move through the water like this guy like it is just it was the next level above what I’d ever seen before

and it just gives me it gave me such appreciation for how how good it looks but just also I think the amount of work it takes to get there and then some people are just naturally gifted and naturally talented and you can’t teach that and this guy was certainly that absolutely absolutely absolutely no completely agree with you completely agree with you it’s just getting that getting that ability to look at what makes these people tick and then just trying to translate that to an amateur level as well without making people feel too depressed about it but also they should be inspired in terms of like this is what I feel that you’re doing at the moment and this is what I feel like that you can get to you know we can take bits of this and bits of that and ultimately yes anybody can well not anybody a lot of people can swim very technically perfectly for a few strokes or even a length but it’s just that continuity it’s that repetition exactly

what you’re saying about watching those distance swimmers it’s doing it consistently repeatedly and as well as doing it repeatedly then doing it putting on an S&C program as well on top so you’re doing it with more power in the equating and I think that’s where a lot of people where a lot of people would benefit would be a more enhanced S&C program and it’s not just Brenton so they have more power in the stroke it’s also swimming the one of the very few sports in the world where we need a good strong body position in order to not just improve power in the stroke but also to decrease drag and so when you’re able to keep a if you’re saying nice and strong and high and powerful you’re dropping your drag coefficient which is making you go faster as well putting power into the stroke there’s essentially three or perhaps four ways to go and quicker on you increase your power you increase your cadence you decrease your drag or

improve your tech but arguably improving your tech is part and parcel with decreasing your drag but it’s not it’s not rocket science it’s just lots of different factors as to how we can do those different bits and particularly through the core through the hips like through the truncates that is where I think a lot of people they don’t have a lot of power through there a lot of strength through there and they particularly as they get tired that’s when they start to lose that body position because they’re wriggling around starting to snake through the water a bit and obviously upper body as well is really important there but yeah it’s particularly through through the hips and the glutes and just that ability to sort of keep the legs up I think a lot of people lack that lack that strength and it’s not a like everything’s not a short I mean you had a whole documentary to look at that and he’s going to enjoy this he’s going to enjoy this

he’s looking for copies by the end of some of that

so with that, yeah with like the don’t-be-pray documentaries so you obviously had a big part in that with with Mark and I think I guess I haven’t seen a lot of swimming documentaries because there’s not a huge amount out there you mentioned one before the call twoswimmers.co.uk just one that you did which I’m keen to check out but it’s great I think like those sorts of documentaries about swimming just bring a lot of people to the to the sport and anything that can move you emotionally like I found it was quite it was very moving towards the the whole documentary particularly towards the end there it really gets you to feel something it’s like man this is a really well told story so I know like Mark introduced us and I’m really glad he did because I’ve learned so much from this podcast there’s a lot that I’ll be able to take my own coach and I’m sure the listeners will as well and for anyone listening to this I mean it sounds like you’ve got a pretty full schedule

but for anyone who wants to to get in touch with you who is maybe looking to do some marathon swimming what’s the best way to get in touch with you send me an email and then let’s try and see if we’re cool so either tim at redtopswim.com or info at we’ve also got the redtop performance on Instagram and so pinging line through that as well so those are your best channels really yeah onwards and you’re based out of London was it? Yeah I personally live about now south of London but yeah our squads are in London want to on trainings in London and then run the camps in Croatia we’re looking to do some more stuff in UAE later in the year beginning next and then we fly around all around the world as well doing the swims themselves yeah and you clearly know your stuff so tim it’s been such a pleasure having you on I really appreciate you finding the time to do this and it’s the same before you’re a hard man to tie down usually I’m the one

who’s off travelling and doing camps but I think you’re busier than I am so I’m glad we could find a time to meet and I wish you all the best for the rest of the year and with the squad and all the swimmers you’ve got because it sounds like you’ve got a busy couple of months coming up. Thanks Brinton. Appreciate it. Thanks so much.