So you don’t need to stop straight away as soon as everything is soon as something drops off But we do need to be aware of it and sometimes we just need to find that balance between putting in the hard work Having a straight breakdown, but not letting it break down too much where we’re training a really bad form Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes Love the water become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host Brenton Ford

Most of us spend years making the same mistakes again and again Thinking progress is about piling on endless lap after lap But what if I told you there’s a smarter faster way to become a better swimmer without necessarily training harder But swimming smarter in this video I’ll share with you 10 powerful insights that took me years to learn Insights that if I’d known them earlier would have saved me endless laps endless years of Swimming but not really seeing much progression whether you’re struggling with inconsistency Unsure if your technique is effective or nervous about open water swimming I’m going to show you exactly what to focus on to transform your swimming experience Progress isn’t linear One thing that I didn’t know growing up was that the progression wouldn’t always be in this upward trajectory It’s almost like walking up a mountain with a yo-yo that yo-yo will come up It will go down it will come up it will go down and we will see this

upward progression But sometimes we actually get a little bit slower before we get better and often when people hit those bits where they’ve Regressed in a way. They think that they’re doing the wrong thing But quite often the progression is this up and down movement that if we can just persist through those harder times Where we don’t really see the results of the work we’re doing then we can come out the other side of it Being a better swimmer and so often people quit or they get disheartened that they’re not getting better all the time But sometimes we do have to work away at things for several months and often several years to really get to that next level Especially as we are getting quicker and getting better getting towards the pointy end of the field So at the start you often see a lot of improvement early on but that’s not always the case as you get quicker video yourself early The first time ever got filmed was about eight years into my swimming journey and I thought this is going to look amazing

I have swum for a long time. I’ve reached a pretty good level in my swimming This is going to look amazing when I look at this footage But the reality was that there were so many things I was doing wrong that I didn’t even know about Yet I had trained for a long time. I thought I was swimming incredibly well So if you can video yourself early on in your journey You will progress so much faster than someone who goes 10 years without ever having seen themselves swim I often have a lot of members who sent through their videos for analysis and The first comment they make is I can already see five things I’m doing wrong because they’d never filmed themselves before and so That is such a crucial step to Fast-tracking your progression as a swimmer swimming is as much a mental game as it is a physical game Quite often people think that the way to get faster is to get fitter and get stronger and absolutely that counts for a large part of it

But there’s a big aspect of swimming that is all about the mental side of it Even if you are a beginner Sometimes that mental side of it can impact you more than the physical side of it Because sometimes we get caught in our heads wherever we think that this is an unsafe place to be or we think I’m not any good at this So we tend to panic or we tend to be short of breath so if you can control the mental side of it and Make sure you’re training about just as much as the physical side of it That will help you progress a lot quicker than if you’re focused on just the physical aspect of it And the faster you get the higher up you get in swimming That’s often where the mental games by a big part of it, too If you watch the Olympics and you look at the top two to three competitors in any event Sometimes it comes down to just the mental side of it and who’s been able to kick their nerve All the way for those four years leading up to the Olympics

So controlling the mental game as much as the physical game just swimming more doesn’t guarantee your progress Certainly, there’s an element to having to swim consistently putting in the yards putting in the kilometers However, if you’re just swimming without any focus and your technique isn’t that great Then you’re probably in spelling or training bad habits And if your technique is enough to scratch you’re going to hit this ceiling where you can’t get any faster So a good way to approach the swimming is yes We need to be consistent But we also need to make sure that the lats we’re doing are of a certain standard and a certain quality Because if we’re training bad habits with our technique then we are going to limit ourselves Now it doesn’t mean to be overly cautious and make and not do more than 25 meters without stopping We need to allow some Some leeway in there However, make sure that you’re not just going up and down with this really ugly scrappy technique

Make sure you’re training to a pretty decent level 80 90 percent of your Good technique is often a good good approach there and as you’re doing some harder sessions Yes, you’re going into fatigue your stroke is going to break down a bit So you don’t need to stop straight away as soon as everything As soon as something drops off But we do need to be aware of it and sometimes we just need to find that balance between putting in the hard work Having a straight breakdown But not letting it break down too much where we’re training a really bad form the clock can help But don’t worship it Quite often people will put their self-worth as a person as a swimmer On what their garment tells them at the end of a session But you are going to have days where you are absolutely flying And you feel like you’re hardly putting in any effort and you’re hitting amazing times And there will be other days where no matter how hard you try

You cannot get even close to what you know, you’re capable of doing So that’s going to happen no matter whether you’re an Olympian or whether you are brand new to swimming if you can just continue with your swimming and use the clock But don’t worry too much about the times that you’re doing if you can just continue and be consistent with things Then over time you will progress in this upward trajectory But the clock is only a very small part of swimming Especially with the ups and downs that you’re going to encounter throughout a week throughout a month and throughout a year Your stroke does not have to look like the pros

Hey real quick in case you didn’t know We run swimming camps around the world from the Maldives, Thailand, Japan with sundays Galapagos islands plus a bunch of new locations for next year So if you’d like to join us at a future camp and improve your swimming and explore and experience some of the best locations to swim in the world then go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash camps We’ve got all the dates and locations listed there A question I get all the time is i’m not that quick. Will this camp be suitable for me? We have a wide range of speeds and abilities come to the camps So as long as you can swim a kilometer There’s a very good chance that these camps will be suitable for you And if you’re not sure just get in touch with us and we’ll make sure that we do find you a suitable camp Thanks for listening. Let’s get back into the podcast One of our most popular videos in fact our most popular video that we did on this channel

was a video of dan smith swimming a 1 minute 10 100 In what looked like two minutes where he was absolutely cruising to hit a 110 But he made it even made it look very easy. Now his stroke is amazing Olympic level swimmer incredible technique yet that sort of way of swimming Is not probably the best way for a lot of the people that I coach who are adults who are triathletes Because they have different mobility particularly through the feet through the shoulders through their rotation and that sort of technique is not what they might need to Do in order to be the best swimmer that they can be So there’s so many different styles if you watch the olympics In an eight person final there might be eight different styles of freestyle in there So it’s best to find a style that suits you In our elite swimmer section in the membership. We have triathletes open water swimmers Olympic pool swimmers There’s a variety of different types of swimmers in there

And if you look at the differences between them there are some some big differences And so what I suggest to a lot of people is find a swimmer that looks a bit like you in how they swim Maybe they build maybe their mobility and try and copy their technique try and aim towards something like that Because if you’re trying to swim like dan smith Then you might actually be slowing yourself down because that sort of style isn’t best suited to you So you don’t have to look like a pro Or maybe don’t have to look like the swimmer that you Aspire the most to be because that might not be the best style for you You might actually be holding yourself back comfortable gear matters more than fancy deer The good thing about swimming is you can get away with having a swimsuit And some goggles and that is all you need to swim Unlike cycling unlike a lot of other sports require a lot of Investment in terms of money to be good at it. Swimming is very simple

So don’t get caught up in needing the latest or the most expensive gear Quite often you don’t actually need much to be a good swimmer. So if you just keep to the basics Get some gear that’s comfortable some good goggles cap A good swimsuit that will take you a very long way Now there is other gear that’s that can be worth getting and it’s worth getting a good pair of fins It’s worth getting a a snorfall and maybe some paddles if you’re doing trifle But you don’t actually need a lot. So don’t feel like you need all the gear To be a good swimmer. You can keep it basic have a goal even a small one When you first start swimming your your goal might be 50 meters without stopping And that’s a that’s a good goal to start with Then as you get going in your swimming sometimes we kind of get caught in the weeds a bit And we forget to actually set our next target And sometimes it just needs to be a certain race

Maybe a certain distance or a certain pace that you’re trying to achieve for a 1k time trial But even having a small goal to work towards Will give you that little bit of motivation you need to put in the work to get there I’ve been caught quite a quite a few times without having set a main goal And so my training’s been there and I’ve been going up and down But I haven’t really put in the effort because there’s nothing to work towards Yet when I set a really difficult goal for me, which was the rock nest channel Which is a 20 kilometer swim when I was doing that I got to the pool five times a week. I was driving An hour plus into Melbourne to do some my open water swims And I did whatever it took to to do that. So sometimes we need this bigger goal to actually Bring us forwards and bring us closer to To our swimming our swimming goal. We need something that kind of scares us a little bit Or we know we have to push towards and there’ll be times in your in your swimming journey where

You might just cruise for a little bit and then times where you set yourself a bigger challenge But the mistake I’ve been caught in so many times is not actually setting a target or a goal And then six months or 12 months of training It doesn’t go to waste But I certainly don’t putting the same amount of effort as if I’ve got a big challenge to work towards Learn how to stay calm in the chaos In open water swimming the elements can change all the time And you might be thrown into situations where you’re not necessarily very comfortable So when it comes to training in the pool One simple way that I like to use for our swim is to get comfortable in being in these chaotic conditions First thing is you can do some pack swimming if you’ve got a group of swimmers If you swim down a lane with four or five or six of you all together And you’re not swimming over the top of each other But you’re having people push your feet down swing very close

Getting used to having other people around and used to that chaos That’s a good way to To get used to it another thing you can do is breath control So we’ll often do sets where it’s like eight fifties where we breathe every three strokes five seven and then nine And when you’re breathing every nine strokes You have got quite a while between your next breath And you might feel like you are running out of air and that can cause you to panic But if you can get comfortable being in that sort of position And then you can push yourself to maintain breathing every nine That’s a good way to actually have that calm in that chaos So breath control is a really good way to Have to force the mind to calm down in order to hit that breath control So there are ways that you can help Be calming chaos By training in the pool and not just doing that in the the open water There’s a whole word or swimming beyond the pool When I was growing up all I knew was the pool the black line

I had no idea about open water swimming Swimming holidays swimming trips swimming camps There is so much more to swimming beyond the pool And so if you don’t necessarily enjoy going up and down the black line That is okay. There is so much other things that you can do Around the water and with your swimming that you might enjoy more And so it’s about finding something that you Like and then you’re probably going to stick with it And then you’re probably going to progress a lot more of you would if you did something you don’t enjoy Now that said I loved swimming in the pool I love training with the squad and going through hard sets But in terms of competition, I really enjoy open water swimming And so now that I’ve found that that’s the thing that I mostly do in terms of competitive racing And so when it comes to the pool That’s not necessarily where my head’s at right now But the thing is just do what you enjoy

And that’s usually the thing that’s going to actually motivate you if you enjoyed this video Check out this video with annie donson who held one minute 12 per 100 for four hours 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