If you work on those first, that’s highly important. It’s really the 20% that is the 80% of the importance of what’s gonna contribute to your success. 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. Hi, Brenton Ford here. Welcome to episode number 105 of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. Today’s episode is about working on your big rocks to start with, but making sure that you still work on the smaller rocks and the sand. You’ve probably heard the analogy of in order to fill up a glass vase, if you put in the big rocks first and then you fill it up with smaller rocks and then pebbles and then sand, you can fill it all the way up to the top while fitting everything in. And the way I sort of view this in swimming is that if you work on your biggest rocks, and for most people, those big rocks

are they’re doing the work. So they’re doing the training that’s needed and necessary to get them to where they wanna go. And it’s working on their technique and having enough focus on the technical aspect of their stroke to be able to swim fast. For most people, they’re the big rocks. The smaller rocks are things like strength training, nutrition, mobility, mindset that sometimes can be a big rock as well depending on what you’re training for. But really those key big rocks, if you work on those first, that’s highly important. It’s really the 20% that is the 80% of the importance of what’s gonna contribute to your success. But you don’t wanna neglect those smaller rocks like we just mentioned. So make sure you get those big things done first, but after that, it can be really important, it can be really beneficial to make sure that you do include those other things if you want to have the most success that you can.

If you wanna fill up your glass phase as full as you possibly can. So don’t neglect the smaller rocks, they are still important, but if you get the majority of stuff done, doing the training, working on your stroke, that’s going to put you in a pretty good stead, in a pretty good way to achieve whatever goals you’ve set out. I’ve been thinking about this analogy when it comes to training towards the Rotnest swim, which is coming up in a couple of weeks time at the end of February. And the most important thing that I’ve been trying to do each week is the amount of kilometers that I’ve set out. So last week it was 35 Ks, this week it’s 40 kilometers. So I’ve been just incrementally increasing the kilometers that I’m doing. And I know that if I hit those Ks, I’m going to be looking pretty good for the race. Technically, I had a big focus on my technique at the start of my preparation for this in October, November. And that’s, I feel like I’ve got that sorted pretty well.

So the focus really is just on doing the kilometers. But related to those kilometers is in order to be able to do that sort of volume, I need to be getting a massage every week. I need to be eating pretty well. I need to be doing some sort of strength training, some core work, some work on the chin up bar, and with the TheraBands as well. So I’ve been including all of these things into my training, those smaller rocks. But the main focus is on getting the kilometers done. So it’s really a balance between all of those things, but I don’t want to neglect the most important thing, which is those big rocks. And for me, that was the weekly training kilometers. 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.