Welcome to Effortless Swimming, the podcast for swimmers, triathletes and coaches. Join Australian swim coach Bretton Ford and he reveals the latest techniques and information to improve your swimming. Let’s dive right in. Welcome to another episode of the Effortless Swimming podcast. Today’s guest is Russell Smith who is the current age group triathlon world champion in Olympic distance and is also the Asia Pacific age group champion in Ironman. Russ has been using the Effortless Swimming workouts as part of his training program so I wanted to get him on to talk about his success in triathlon and also how he’s using the Effortless Swimming workout. So welcome to the call Russ. Thanks Brent. Thanks. So for the listeners that don’t know tell us a little bit about your triathlon career. Been doing triathlons for about 25 years, well the first time was about 25 years ago but more seriously for about 18 years and predominantly it’s always just been Ironman

and then back in about three years ago I did the world champs in Olympic distance in the Gold Coast and that was sort of the first time I sort of looked seriously at doing those, the short distance and then this year in Auckland and you know great result winning the age group there. Just talk me through that world champs race last year in Auckland where you won your age group. How did you start out with the swim and how did the race go? Well the tactics were to have a good swim and bike. My running was my weakest length and the swim and the bike went perfect. Just seeing that being one of those perfect races and just the conditions were quite rough. Well actually quite really rough and that always suites the sort of strongest swimmers so I was sort of second out of the water about 10 seconds down on the guy that was first so we had quite a good gap on everyone else which was great. It just sort of set me up for everything to go right for the rest of the race.

One of my favourite things is that you can’t win a triathlon in the swim but you can lose it because if you’re too far behind the pack then it’s very difficult to catch up in the bike and then the run so coming out second or just behind first obviously set you up pretty well for that bike leg. Yeah well that’s always been the saying that you can’t win the race in the swim but when I looked at the times for everyone else this was a race that was actually won. I won that through the swim and that doesn’t happen often but the time that I made up in the swim was what got me through and won the race. And you can get to the swimming workouts program so for the people that Lewis says they don’t know it’s going up and you get 12 workouts since you each month and they’re just workouts you can follow. How have you been using the program? Before I started doing my own program so I found that with the effort of swimming

it’s just easy to have a structured training program there and then I don’t have to sit down and think about it myself because you end up becoming quite repetitive when you do games. We swim three times a week and some three times a week and I’ve been really enjoying them actually because I don’t have to think about them myself. That’s it. For people that are time poor a lot of triathletes work full time and they’ve got a juggle on training so if you’ve got your workouts that they work then it’s easy just to print them off and head to the pool with them. What’s the typical workout look like from the program? It’s always a bit of a shock to see the big warm-ups. That just means that my warm-ups used to be a 400 to 600 meters straight swim and then you’d get into the main session but with the effort of swimming you have quite a long warm-up which is quite good and then you sort of focus on that main program and put most of the effort into

that main program which can be anything from like this morning we did the main one was 2.4K but anything from about sort of that 1800 meters to 3 to 4K and I really think that my improvement because we used to use paddles a lot just in the heaps of paddles and with the effort of swimming there’s very little paddle work and I always think that that’s actually helping the swimming and you’re really focusing on catching the water and getting the feel for the water. So I think the sessions have just been really good in the way that they’ve been structured for me anyway. It’s a good point about the warm-up too because the other day I did a few sessions doing 100-100 because they had training for some big distances but I just jumped in and did 40 with them and it was on not much rest so it was pretty much like doing a training session without any warm-up and without much warm-up it’s hard to get the muscles going and to have

strength there to do the right to feel good in your main set. So by doing some kicks and drills and some school work and variable pace stuff in the warm-up you find that it sets you up better so main set to perform better? Yeah, yeah, like when you get into that main set and you’re supposed to be working at certain intensities you can actually work at that intensity right where it goes and your pace quite often if you just do I say 400 warm-up you’re not really warmed up and then you get into your intensity sort of stuff in your main set and the first few can be quite sort of they feel quite hard because you’re not warmed up properly so I just find that the longer warm-up is quite good building into that main set because of that. And you’re a triathlon coach too so you probably see as the bet is that in a lot of swimming workouts… I see it all the time and mostly with triathletes is that they just go to the pool and they just say

well when they begin they’re sort of trying to get their 1k and then they slowly build it up so they just sort of swing a 2k or 3k straight. Yeah, their fitness is improving but they’re not really getting the full benefit of doing a 3km set which is broken in here and so forth. And being able to rest a 3k set it might sound like a pretty big main set but when it’s broken up into 100s, 200s or 400s you get that rest in between your muscles can recover and you can switch on mentally for that next part of the

competition. I’ve had a bit of a break and I’m still having a little bit of a break since the Auckland race or the World Champs in Auckland. Plan this year, and this is the only plan at the moment is to look at doing the Ironman Kings and then to London in October for the World Champs to go. But yeah, that’s the plan whether that happens or not. I’m hoping it’s going to happen but that’s a little bit as well. So that’s what I’ll be aiming for, the main goal being London, the World Champs in London. And it’s not the same as what they were, well it’s not the same area as the Olympic. The elite guys will be racing on that same circuit but with the age groupers because you’ve got around 3,000 age groupers and you can’t throw 3,000 people onto a multi-lap like 8 or 10 laps on the bike because of the drafting. So generally you’ll find that the age groupers will have a two-lap course and also on the run will be like two laps with the elite

and the elite guys are doing those multi-laps before on the run. I hope you’re able to get there because it’d be great to see have another hit out at that World Championship. And you’re a triathlon coach so you’re in the world because you’re doing it online. So if people want to get in touch with you or ask any questions or want to help with some triathlon coach you may reckon they’d get in touch with you. The easiest way is online and just through my email gobeyondlimits at gmail.com so that’s gobeyondlimits at gmail.com. If you’re in New Zealand and you want to call me you can call me on 021 575 and also I’ve got the website set up as well which is gobeyondphysicallimits. So anyone want to get hold of me definitely do and I think I can help you out. Good stuff. I’ll put those links on the website as well so people can, so if you didn’t catch that you can go through online at effortlessmene.com but thanks again for being on the call

and appreciate your sharing, part of your training program with the listeners and it’s been great, great working with you over the last couple of months with the workouts and wish you all the best for your competition over the next few months and the next few years. Thanks Brent, that was great. Thanks for joining us on the effortless swimming podcast. To get transcriptions, bonus videos and to be the first to hear about new episodes go to swimmingpodcast.com