You can see that with swimmers is sometimes like they’ll have this bad breath to their preferred side and they’ll breathe to the other side, and it’ll actually look a lot better. And they’ll be like, ah, it feels terrible. It feels terrible. It feels terrible. You’re never going to get your breathing under control if you feel like your legs are constantly sinking and you have to kick because it’s just exhausting. Like you’re always going to feel out of breath because your legs are always hammering to try to keep you afloat because you feel like you’re sinking. 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 back to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Andrew Shafe. He’s a three times NCAA championship winning coach and author of the book, A Constraints Let Approach to Swim Coaching. On this episode, Andrew and I talk about breathing, how often should you breathe? What causes someone to feel like they’re running out of breath, even if they’re really fit individual? How do you improve your breathing to the other side? If it feels like it’s more of a challenge to breathe one to one side compared to the other, and do you need to breathe bilaterally? And we also talk about some of the common mistakes that we see as coaches and how we go about correcting those mistakes. We also discuss at the end the catch and pull development for adults. So how do you take someone with very little feeling for the water to the point where they feel like they’ve got a connection with it and that they can move themselves forwards effectively with their proper catch and pull?

And what are some of the innovative ways that Andrew likes to teach his athletes these types of things? So let’s find out the answers to those questions on this episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. All right, Andrew, thanks for being back on the podcast. Yep, great to be here. So Andrew, today I want to talk about two key things. One is breathing and the other one is catch and pull development for adults because I’d say people that I coach, they’re two big things. One is they get people get tired too quickly. They feel like they run out of air. Well, they feel like they can’t breathe to the other side or they struggle with their catch and pull and feel as though they don’t have much connection or feel for the water. So I want to get stuck into those topics. And with your experience in working with some of the best swimmers in the world, with how detailed you’ve got with some of these things with your book, which you can see here, Constraints that Approach to Swim Coaching, then I think you’ve really dug deep into some of these topics.

So I’m excited to get stuck into them and ask you about some of these topics that I get asked about because I love to hear how other coaches approach them and some ways that people can improve on them. So let’s start with that with the breathing. So first of all, how should someone breathe? Should I breathe in really big and exhale really big? Should it be normal? What’s your thought there? Right. So I think that with the exhale itself, they just the biggest thing is to make sure all the air is out by the time they breathe. And so like some people like to kind of like trickle it and then kind of like get the rest of it out. And some people like to kind of hold it and then kind of blow it out right before they, you know, as they’re turning their head like right before they open their mouth. And I think there’s probably some some options. I don’t know that one or the other really, really matters. But I think it is important that that you really kind of breathe out so that when you open your mouth, it just it’s almost like a vacuum and then the air just kind of sucks in.

And so you don’t have to really like stress about, you know, thinking about breathing. And I think if people are like, you don’t want to be like gasping and trying to get like that huge breath, you just want to kind of get a breath because I think if you if you try to get that massive, you know, if it’s a gasp, you know, one, you’re probably in desperate need of oxygen and two, like that’s your focus and it’s going to probably disrupt the rest of the stroke. So I think the biggest thing is just making sure that you’re kind of exhaling out like before you actually breathe because that’s going to take it a lot, you know, it’s just going to take a lot more time. If you’re doing both with your heads out of the water and it’s going to lead to probably a rust panic feeling. So I think, you know, if someone’s comfortable, it’s just kind of letting it trickle out a little bit and then blowing out the rest of it right before they breathe.

I think that’s fine. If they want to hold it a little bit longer, I think that’s fine too. But making sure they really blow it out is pretty. Yeah. And even to kind of get quite nuanced there, because I’ve said the same thing to swimmers before and sometimes I’ve had a few swimmers take it too literally where they’re trying to expel every last little bit of air they’ve got in their lungs. Right. And so I had not to the extreme, but just like where you’ve, where you’ve a solid push. Yeah. Yeah. Not where you’re continuing to push for another second or two. And if you’re going for a jog, your heart rates up a little bit. Your breathing is going to be a little bit like that where it’s not like, it’s not this big like right in how it’s how it’s just like, it’s just kind of not slow and steady, but it’s just, it’s a bit more controlled. I’m not trying to do it. Yeah. Yeah. I think you kind of touch on a big, a big point is that there has to be like a rhythm to it.

Whereas in, in land sports, you know, you can kind of get away with not having as much of a rhythm all that’s still going to be a problem eventually. But, but there has to be really rhythmic and swimming because it’s tied into the rhythm of your stroke. And if you’re trying to have a solid rhythm with your freestyle and then your breathing is on this totally different rhythm, I think that’s going to cause problems. And so like, like, like you kind of said, it has to be kind of a steady flow to it. I think that’s also really important aspect of it. Yeah. You bring up a good point there just in terms of the rhythm of it. So when you look at, look at the top summers racing, they’ll generally have a set breathing pattern, whether it’s every two or two, four, two, four, like we say with Ariane Titmuss or every three. And sometimes it will change within a lap. It might be two off the wall and then maybe settling to a four and then going to a two for the last five, 10 meters.

If it’s like a 1500, for example, you’ll see that with some of the distance summers, but they’ve got that, that rhythm to it and that consistency to it. Do you, would you be trying to teach that to adults or to kids or what’s your approach there with developing that? Yeah. So I think that what’s important, so there’s two separate things. There’s a kind of like a training aspect and a performance aspect. And so in a performance aspect, I think people should do whatever feels most comfortable and they should kind of stick with that throughout the duration of the race. And if they feel comfortable with kind of different patterns, then that’s okay to mix them in because like, you know, if you want to be breathing to your left to see somebody or breathing to the right and see somebody, like that’s fine to switch that out. I think in training, it’s good to expose people to a lot of different breathing patterns because I think that can help them find a different rhythm.

And it doesn’t have to be like, you know, you breathe half of the time to your left and half the time to your right. You might like spend, you know, I’m kind of making up the numbers, but like 75% of the time with your preferred pattern and then maybe 25% or, you know, something like that. Doing some different patterns where maybe you’re just, you know, if I always breathe to the right, maybe I’m doing somewhere. I breathe to the left and then someone I’m breathing every three, just so I can kind of get a little bit of a different feel. And, you know, I found that that sometimes people learn things, if they always breathe to the right, they’ll breathe to the left. And because it’s new, they’re trying to figure things out. And there’s usually something they can take from breathing to the left and apply it to breathing to the right. And so I think that from a learning perspective, it’s good to do kind of all of it.

But it’s, you know, you need to find the rhythm that works best for you. And that’s what you have to kind of race in and compete in. So I think that there’s kind of two separate processes. And then, you know, when they’re doing most of their kind of like race stuff or their higher intensity stuff, you just kind of let them breathe however, however it’s most comfortable for them. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you there. And it’s totally okay to breathe every two to the one side in a race. But as you said, it’s great to mix it up within training. And interesting, you talk about, they learn, people can learn when they breathe to the other side. I had one of the athletes that I work with send through some data. So they were using the EO swim better devices measuring the force and direction. And when he breathes to his left, which is what he would normally do, he, his power on his left hand side was, I think it’s about 30% less than his, than his right.

And he did a test breathing to the right hand side. And that came up almost even with his right side powers. Yeah, 10% less now. So what we, what we were seeing there is that, OK, the power is more even, more balanced when he breathes to the right hand side. And when we look at the propulsive forces, when he’s breathing to his right, it’s how it was, it was, yeah, it was, it was a lot, a lot higher and more sustained as well. So what we’re looking to dig into now and haven’t got the answers to, to this is, like, all right, let’s, we’ll see if that’s, that’s faster first of all, but it seems as though that’s probably a better stroke to work towards. So we’re just looking at, all right, what’s the next, what’s the next step from here? So it’s quite interesting to see that. And I’ve actually had swimmers who would only breathe to one side and then they’ve changed to the other side, at least sort of tested it.

And they found they’re actually faster, even by a second or three per hundred. Right. He’s, which is quite a bit. And yeah, sure. And that wouldn’t think so, because it doesn’t feel as comfortable to break to that, to that side. Right. And that’s, that’s an interesting thing too, is like, you know, just as a coach with, without the measurements of it, like you can see that with swimmers is sometimes like they’ll have this bad breath to their preferred side and they’ll breathe to the other side and it’ll actually look a lot better. And they’ll be like, oh, it feels terrible. It feels terrible. It feels terrible. And so sometimes though, it’s just they, they haven’t spent all that time doing it poorly. And so it’s relatively like, you know, it hasn’t been ruined yet. And yeah. And I think the challenge is, is like, can they, can they manage to find a good rhythm on that other side? And is it worth that change?

And sometimes it’s tough to figure out what the best thing is. And that’s kind of like the art of it with, with both the coach and swimmers figuring that out. And I think it’s definitely worth exploring. And in terms of getting more comfortable and more balanced on the non-preferred side, are there any drills or exercises that you would do with your swimmers in the water to develop that? Yeah. So I think a lot of times when people struggle to breathe to one side, what happens is that their rotation is kind of like asymmetrical. And so, so they, they rotate more to the, to the breathing side, which is, which is fine. Like that’s going to probably happen, but that for whatever reason they really struggle to get to the other side. And so, and, and you know, just think about it, like if you can’t, it’s a lot harder to breathe that you’re completely flat. And so, you know, if they, if they can’t rotate to the other

side, it’s going to feel really uncomfortable to breathe. And so one drill I like is, you know, it’s, you know, I call it stroke and roll. So you can take a certain number of strokes and when you breathe, you basically stay low and roll on your back. And so you’ll, you’ll really exaggerate the rotation. And for someone who struggles to breathe to the opposite side, that can be effective because it actually forces them to roll all the way over. And they keep their, keep their head in line. So it’s just a purely rotational movement. And for those that are struggling to breathe the other side, because they lack rotation to that side, they’re going to feel that when they do that. And that could be really helpful because, you know, they probably think they can’t do it. And then once they do it, it’s like, oh, that’s kind of what it’s like. And it kind of opens the door, opens the window. And now they have a sense of what it could be or what it could feel like.

And then, you know, they’re more likely to be able to figure that out then. So I think that that’s one thing that I found pretty helpful. That’s like, that’s a great approach because when I run clinics, you’ll have new people come in who I’ve never seen before. And we’ll do, we’ll start with some front kick drill. We’ll go into some side kicking. And for the swimmers that, yeah, for a lot of the swimmers, and these are all adults there, they struggle to rotate at least to one side. So when they’re doing the side kick rather than being at 45 or even a little bit more flat drill, I don’t mind. They’re just flat, completely flat for that drill. And they really struggle to just get the hips and get the legs and the feet kicking on the side there. And because it just feels unusual, feels different and they don’t have that balance there yet. So by encouraging them to overdo it and exaggerate it, it just gets them to make that change.

And it’s quite often what needs to happen in many cases is to overdo it. Then we can dial it back if we need to. Right. Yeah, that’s just in change and in general, I think, you know, so say someone’s arm is, you know, they’re crossing over and you tell them to like put their arm way out here and they move it an inch and they think, oh, it’s way out like people’s perception of what change is, is usually wrong. That what would feel to them massive is usually not massive at all. And so like you said, overdoing it, like I just, I don’t, I want you to do it so wrong, like exaggerate it so much because then once you go past, it’s way easier to bring it, as you said, it’s way easier to bring it back. But like if you’re trying to like just go an inch, an inch, an inch at a time, it’s like, don’t do that. Just go like make a massive change that feels so terrible that there’s no way it can be right and you’re probably going to be a lot closer to

where you need to be than you think you are. Yeah, I see it like having a rubber band where it always just wants to come back to right where you really got to stretch it. Yeah, exactly right. And then it’s like, OK, it’s kind of out of its constraints a little bit there. So yeah, that’s I think it’s such a such a good approach. What are some other common mistakes you see there with the breathing? So lack of rotation to the non-preferred side.

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store, download the Skillist app today. That’s S-K-I-L-L-E-S-T, download the Skillist app today and get started. And only for our Effortless Swimming podcast listeners, we’re giving away our Art of Triathlon course, free, as well as a technique analysis online through the Skillist app from me for free as well. Go to effortlesswimming.com forward slash Skillist offer or click the link in this podcast description and you’ll get the Art of Triathlon swimming course for free as well as a technique analysis from me through the Skillist app. And now back to the podcast. Yeah. And then the other, you know, the three big things to me are always like people lift their head to breathe. And sometimes that’s because their head position is just too low when they’re swimming anyway. And so they kind of have to lift and then, but they just, and they end up lifting way too much. And, you know, that’s going to cause all sorts of

problems and then where they pulled the head to the side to breathe. And so they’re not staying on a straight line. And then the third one to me is just, it just takes too long. And so it just magnifies whatever mistakes they make because they’re out of position for an even longer time. So I think, you know, helping people learn to stay low and then stay straight is the biggest thing because that’s where, you know, when you come up and over, it’s also going to take more time too. And so, you know, you’re getting in positions where you’re creating a lot of resistance as you move through the water. And, you know, that’s definitely not what you want. And that’s what, you know, to me that can cause the most problems with breathing is just people lose their body alignment and sometimes they never get it back.

And it’s the thing that I think as coaches, that way you say, like, if people swim in snorkels, generally they swim pretty well. Pretty even, quite balanced. You know, it’s quite a good stroke overall. And then as soon as we introduce the breathing, that’s when things can fall out of place. So if you can keep your head low when you breathe, if you can keep it centered, if you can get it relatively quickly, that’s going to cover most of your bases. That’s going to help you just keep that better alignment and stop you from dropping the hips and the legs because anything below that line is going to slow you down a lot. And so it’s just a matter of just getting that breath. It’s going to be a lot harder than it’s asked. Yeah, and it’s going to be a lot harder too.

One of the form goggles, they’ve just released a couple of features with the breathing. So one is it will show you the angle of your eyes. So for people who don’t have, say, coaches on deck and getting that feedback, having this feature is pretty helpful. So there’s head tilt. So just where you’re looking. Now there’s a range there for where everyone should be. And so I’d say with that feature, you don’t need to get it to 100 out of 100 there because there’s a range. I don’t think you have to get it to 100. But if you’re way outside it, if you’re looking obviously straightforward or too deep, that’s not a good thing either. But the other one they have is time to neutral, which is making sure you’re not taking too long to get there. OK, cool. That basically just looks at that. And I’m guilty of it. Like occasionally I do take too long to get the breath and it’s just habit. And so I have to remind myself, just bring it back quicker.

Bring it back quicker. Like I’m getting out of there still. I just get out of that habit of doing it. Right. So one thing that, so two like visual tricks that I’ve found. And this is assuming that the breath is, you know, if someone has a lot of breathing problems, this might not help them that much. But, you know, the first is always be seeing the bottom of the pool. And so like when you breathe, you want to get back to seeing the bottom of the pool as much as possible. And that could just help like reinforce that you don’t want to be breathing for any longer than you need to. And then the other one is like half people, they close their eyes as they breathe. So there’s someone with their eyes open so it’s safe. But then when they breathe, they just close their eyes. And for like, I think there’s, you know, when people breathe, they’re looking for something. And like they have to wait for their eyes to focus to see it.

And then they, and then that takes time. And then they put their head back down. And so when you take the visual element out of it, for whatever reason, people, you know, just, it’s just more fluid. I don’t really, you know, I’m not sure exactly why, but it just seems to clean up stuff. This, you know, especially if people have a pretty solid breathing pattern already. Yeah, that’s a good one. I haven’t heard that before. I’m going to try that tomorrow and I get into the pool. But it seems to make sense. It’s like you want to just get back to that point of where you’re comfortable and you’re balanced. So you want to open your eyes again. You can only do it when your eyes are looking down. So that makes better sense. And it’s just one of those things, you know, because as you said, it’s hard to just think about it. Like it’s hard to say to yourself, like breathe faster, breathe faster, breathe faster. Like it just, you know, it’s hard to do that for an hour.

And so, you know, whenever you can have these tricks that kind of keep you, keep you focused, it can be, it can be pretty useful. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So that’s, that’s great. I think there’s a lot of, a lot of good things there that can, can help someone. And something that, that I find that helps as well with that is just, it’s very hard to breathe correctly if you’re starting with the wrong head position. And I, I have a lot of swimmers who are looking too far forwards, she’s a long way forward. So it’s very difficult to, to be breathing low if you’re starting from that, that position. So get that sorted first of all, and then the rest becomes a whole lot, a whole lot easier, basically. Otherwise, it’s a real, it’s a real sort of different turn of the head coming from an eyes forwards position there instead. Right. The next, the next not supposed to do that. No, no, I say this from the, you’re swing for an hour.

If you’re walking around for an hour and you’re looking up the sky like that, you’re going to get a sore neck. You’re going to look pretty silly. So don’t do that in the pool. Now, if you can see where you’re going, you’re looking too far forwards is a general rule of thumb. Right, right. Now, let’s, let’s go into the catch and pull. So let’s say you’ve got an adult who would say doesn’t have a great connection or feel for the water. Doesn’t look like they’re moving themselves forwards very well. Let’s assume that they’ve got a decent body position, functional kick, all those sorts of things, but they’re not moving forwards very well. What would you say would be the issue there and what would be some things that you’d work on with them and some drills and exercises you’d go through with them? Right. So I think, you know, the biggest problem is that, you know, the way we, the way that you swim effectively with your arms and the water is just like totally foreign

to everything you do on land. So like, you know, if you think about it, like if you were going to row something or do a pull up or something like that, you pull the elbow down into your rib cage, but that’s like, you know, that’s basically a dropped elbow position. And so, you know, what’s strong is not necessarily efficient because you don’t like, you got to have the bigger paddle to work with. And so I think that’s like the challenge is that so many swimmers, because they’re used to moving on, especially if they’re, they come to the sport late, they’re just used to, you know, dealing with gravity and that’s not going to be, you know, effective way to move water, unfortunately. And so helping people understand that they have this big paddle that they can use and how to keep that paddle in the right place while they’re still trying to apply force is pretty important because the instinct is just to collapse everything

because that’s what works on land. And so I think what can be useful as much as possible is giving them ways to kind of feel what that’s like and feel the different way of interacting with the water. And so a couple of strategies that I like is like, you can just have them put their arms on the deck. And so their whole arm is flat and literally just kind of push into it and have them like move themselves up and down so that they kind of get used to that feeling of pressure on the whole arm, moving them backwards and they can also kind of feel the muscles working too. And so that can be useful for kind of creating a sensory awareness. And then the other thing I like to do is give them different ways to like, you know, change the input and have them be more aware of their hands and so like you can take paddles and like pinch them. And so that way they kind of have to be effective with how they’re pulling or it doesn’t really work at all

or you can hold them upside down. Like I’ll use my phone as an example, but like, you know, like that. So the paddles like that. So then they have to, if they’re gonna pull their arm back, they have to use the whole forearm to make that happen. And so to me, that’s even stuff like closed fist too can just help them be a more, you know, when they open their hands back up, they’re more aware of what’s happening. So that can be a good starting point just in terms of creating awareness. And then, you know, they can start to feel this different way of moving because, you know, you can tell, like, you know, if you just tell someone that doesn’t have a whole lot of experience to have a high elbow, like they don’t really under, like they don’t know what that means because it’s not necessarily what people think it means. And so kind of giving them those experiences is pretty useful. And then something as simple as, you know,

giving them some stroke count stuff, there’s just over 20 fives that forces them to do something different. And I think that’s a big issue too, is they’re just kind of used to doing the same thing and they don’t really know how to get out of that. And so whenever you can give them something that really forces them to do something differently, like we were talking about earlier, like they’re only gonna make these microscopic changes. And so if you were to, you know, say they usually take 20 strokes a lap, if you’re just like, I don’t care what you do, I’m gonna put a buoy and you said, you don’t have to worry about the cake, but just get across the pool and 10 strokes. Like, again, it might not be right, but they’re gonna have to do something very different. And that’s at least the starting point to get some change. And then we can kind of work together to figure out what, you know, how to make, you know, specific changes for that person.

Yeah, that’s great approach because in one way, you’re getting them to figure it out themselves, but also giving them things that kind of forces them to have to make a change. If you’re holding the paddle that way, if you’re using fists and that sort of thing, just where they’ve got less of a chance of getting it wrong, more of a chance of getting it wrong and then having them discover and sort of figure that out just in themselves as well. So there’s a lot of really good strategies there. And as you said, day to day, there’s nothing that you’re gonna be doing that’s gonna have your arm in the same position that you would have going through the catch.

The concept that I’ve found really useful lately has been this concept of a big armpit, big underarm. The catch trying to keep that nice and open. It’s one I’ve been using a lot while coaching and personally for my own swimming as well. And I’ve found that to help a lot because when someone’s dropping their elbow, it’s a poor catch. They’re very small, very closed up with their underarm, but getting them to keep that nice and open through, you know, somewhat through the recovery, but especially through the reef and then through the catch, that helps them work more towards that high elbow position. So one thing I’ve been playing around with a little bit is, there’s this little, I haven’t got it here, but like a little kickboard type thing called Encore that I’ve been mucking around with. And it’s about, what you call it, maybe two inches thick, about the size of your hand. And it’s just kickboard material. And I’ve been doing a little bit of kick on the side,

hand in front and just push it down just below the surface of the water. And that kind of gets me to feel my lats and my peck and everything just sort of switching on in that initial setup of the catch. And then when I take it off after doing kick on the left and right side, I start to feel like I’m keeping that bigger underarm, like I can hold a bit more water and I’m using the right muscles. So just a few things there, just to kind of get that feeling and that sensation has been helping a lot too. Yeah. And it’s the same idea just with different aspects of the stroke. It’s just like, the more you can give people a pretty clear sensation of what they should be doing as opposed to just like kind of, it’s great to have a concept of what they’re trying to do. And then when you can provide them with like specific sensations that they can experience, they’re much more likely to pick it up because whatever they think it’s supposed to be,

like whatever they’re expecting to feel is just totally wrong because they’ve never done it before. And so, as much as possible, you’re trying to like push them into a situation where it’s like, no, this is what it actually feels like. And once they get a sense of it, they can start to like iron out the details and fix all that stuff. But if they don’t have the right conception of it, both in terms of psychologically what they think it is, but also kinesthetically in terms of what they think it should feel like, it’s gonna be impossible. And so, trying to get them in positions where they can feel those things is super important. And what’s your thought behind, how far should you push in training and when should you stop? So let’s say you’re training hard and you feel like halfway through the main set, your technique has fallen to bits and you’re just practicing the wrong thing now. What should a swimmer do in that situation?

Right, so the way I like to handle that is have people be aware of their stroke counts and when they start to fall off the cliff, you have a problem that you like, so say you’re taking whatever, 15 strokes a lap and if it creeps up to 16 and maybe 17 towards the end of a set and you’re still swimming pretty fast, like that’s probably not the end of the world. But if it starts going up higher than that and you’re trying to get it back down,

you’ve gone past the point where you can hold it together. And so, you may be continuing to work hard and train physically, train your physiology, but you’re now practicing skills that are not gonna be effective. And so, I think especially if someone’s swimming by themselves, you just stop, take a little bit extra rest and then you can try again and see if it’s working and say you’re doing 200s and you take a break and then you go back to it and it’s still not working. Well, then maybe today for whatever reason, you need to do hundreds or you need to swim a little bit slower or you just need to stop if it’s that bad. And so, it’s finding little ways to get back on track because again, if your stroke count isn’t the perfect thing but if it’s, you’re taking five more strokes and a 25 meters, like something bad has happened and you’re not doing what you wanna do. And then in a group context, it’s a little bit tougher

especially if you’re part of a training group. But even then, it’s like you just might need to take one off. You just might need a little bit rest and that’s some of the situation where you work with your coach and you’re just like, hey, this is clearly not, something good is not happening and I can’t figure it out. And if you’re tired, you’re not gonna be like, if you’re tired enough, you can’t out-technique that in the sense that like, if you’re so tired, like you can’t continue to execute certain skills and so you just might need some rest. Yeah, and that’s a, I mean, we all have bad sessions and there’s reasons why that happens. Sometimes you’re just not feeling it. Sometimes you’re tired from the day before. If I’ve been coaching and walking around for 12 hours the day before, like I can feel that my hips are sitting what feels like about four inches below the surface of the water, not that bad. But it’s like, it’s great.

You just, you notice those things and I do exactly that. It’s like I’ll count my strokes, especially at the start of a main set. And if I’m taking 30, like 36, 37 strokes per lap

in the 50 and when it should be, you know, when it should be maybe 32, 33 for the same effort. So all right, today’s not the day. I’m gonna have to change something here. And yeah, and it’s just, yeah, don’t they happen? Probably once a fortnight for me. It’s quite often and you just have to know like what your standards are. And so like, and you might not know that today, but if you play with something like this over time and so you clearly, you know, you’re at 32 and you know, when I’m at 36, it’s like something, you know, I have to do something different. And so just like some, some degradation is okay because that just means you’re pushing yourself and you’re trying to figure it out. But, you know, if it falls off a cliff then you need to do something different. And then, you know, as someone gets more experience they start to figure out what that different might be. And so like in your case, it could have been all,

like you just need to open up the intervals. You just need to go a little bit slower. You could have just shortened the distances. Like it could be all sorts of things. And those are things you learn with experience. But if you’re not keeping track of it, if, you know, you have no idea, because there’s sometimes where people think they’re falling apart and they think it’s really terrible but their stroke attitude hasn’t changed and their times haven’t changed. So, you know, it’s, you know, you just might be feeling terrible but you’re still performing just fine. So it’s not something that you really need to worry about. Hmm. And so we’ve talked about the braiding. We’ve talked about the catch and the pull. What’s one other thing that you’ve been working a bit with lately with some clubs or coaches that has kind of stood out to you or you’ve had a bit more attention on recently? Yeah, so I think what’s important,

especially with, you know, people that are still learning the sport, whether that’s young kids or even adults, is, you know, they don’t really spend enough time and this is kind of related to the breathing is really learning how to manage their body position effectively and kind of, you know, almost learning how to float because that’s, you know, you shouldn’t be working to maintain your body because it’s usually just kind of happened and you can use your lungs to make that happen. And a lot of times people, you know, they kind of skip that set because it’s not swimming. It doesn’t look like swimming. It doesn’t, I mean, it isn’t swimming and they think it’s not important but you watch anyone that’s a reasonably accomplished swimmer they can just swim back and forth effortlessly like, you know, forever at really slow speeds and that’s because they can manage their body position with no effort. And it’s something that people tend to overlook

and that’s something that’s, you know, pretty important because you’re not gonna, you know, most people are not gonna just figure that out unless they dedicate some pretty focused effort to improving it and it doesn’t take a lot of time to fix a lot of time to improve but it just tends to be something that’s overlooked by a lot of people. Yeah, great. That’s a great point. So let’s talk about that. You got lungs, that’s what’s filled with air. That’s what’s provided with your buoyancy. How can we then start to bring up the hips and the legs while using that? Right. So, you know, I think the first step is just like feeling that the lungs hold you up. And so like a couple of things I like is like, you know, you just wrap your arms around your legs and you just grab a big breath and most people will float. And so that kind of shows you that, you know, without any effort you can float on the surface in some situations and what you can do too

is like if you have a partner they can like push on your back and you’ll go, you know, you’ll sink but then you’ll kind of shoot back up to the water as the air wants to get back to the surface. So that’s like the starting point and then what you can do is from that position you can kind of learn how to, you know, extend your arms out, extend your legs out and you learn how to kind of lean into the water like people talk about the pressing the T and or press the buoy in your lungs. Like, you know, you figure out how to kind of do that because a lot of people don’t realize that that’s something they can do. And then also how do you do that while creating some tension in your legs because you know, your legs don’t just hang there they have to have some tension but it’s, you know, good swimmers are using as little tension as possible and then you kind of learn how to manage your position and you know, you’re just,

and it’s not that everyone has to be perfectly flat on the surface of the water doing those things but if you can make progress that’s gonna improve your swimming. Yeah, firstly it’s just the awareness that that’s where you have to press is in there and then as you said that little bit of tension switching the core on kind of through your hips through your glutes, your hammies there’s that little bit of tension to hold that straight otherwise you’re just gonna be bent at the hip and that’s gonna slow you down even more. And it’s just not a natural, it’s not naturally where you’re going to go if you’re going to swimming. Right, right. And what people do is they feel their legs sinking until they’re kicked and that doesn’t like, that helps the problem a little bit but it’s completely exhausting. And so kind of going back to the beginning of the conversation people that really struggle with their breathing you’re never gonna get your breathing under control

if you feel like your legs are constantly sinking and you have to kick because it’s just exhausting. Like you’re always gonna feel out of breath because your legs are always hammering to try to keep you afloat because you feel like you’re sinking but and that’s not really gonna solve the problem if you’re not managing your body position affected. Yeah, it’s a great thing to just start with get good body position, get the head sorted and then you’ve got the main foundations there that you can then build on from there. And yeah, it’s a big one. I ran clinics on the weekend here in Melbourne and I would say that probably a little bit over half the swimmers that came along had pretty low hips, pretty low legs and it was a combination of head position was one and how they’re breathing. That was a big one. Some of them just they weren’t leaning and pressing on their chest enough or they were bending their knees and hips too much

when they were kicking. And look, sometimes it was a bit of timing as well. Like they weren’t out in the front quadrant. They were just rushing the stroke and so that makes it a bit harder to keep it as well. So there’s a number of factors and what I go through and I’m analyzing someone’s stroke is I’ll look at the head first of all if they’ve got low body position, how they’re holding their body as well. And then we’ll look at the breathing and then the timing and just see if there’s anything else there that might be a bit unusual is causing their legs to drop. Is there anything else that comes to mind for you that you think or you go, okay, this is another reason why they can’t have a good body position? I think another thing could be that they’re, if they’re pressing in the front, like so what that’ll do is that’ll lift their head up and it’ll lift their chest up and then that’ll push their hips down too. So a lot of people again,

like they’re not used to how to apply force in the water. And so they think as soon as the hand enters the water they’re pushing and so if they’re pushing a little bit, it doesn’t take that much because you’ve got a pretty long arm there’s a lot of leverage on the water that’s gonna start pressing them up too. And that can, and when they do that they’re gonna press through the front half of the stroke and that whole front half of the stroke is gonna be pushing them up a little bit. And so that can cause problems too. And if people don’t really kind of figure out how to like navigate that, that’s another one that can cause problems too I think. Yeah, excellent. Well, Andrew, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Again, I really enjoyed chatting to you because I learn something every time. And I like, I love chatting about this stuff because to me it’s problem solving and it’s just trying to figure out how can we make swimmers better

and how can we get them to learn these things yes, without help but also getting to learn these things on their own and start to sort of be aware of them and figure them out. So I really appreciate you being on the podcast. Where can people find out more about what you’re doing and who you’re working with? Sure. And you can check out my website it’s www.coachandrushief and that’s probably the best way to get all of you. Brilliant. And if you listen to this, go grab the book. It’s, if you’re not a swim coach there’s still lots of good things in there. It’s quite, it’s very detailed. So I wouldn’t say read it from start to finish. Just pick one thing or two things and get working on it because there’s a lot of really good stuff in here. And I mean, I’ve never had the chance to go through the whole thing but there’s just like little, little things in there that I go, OK, this is a great exercise. This is a really good way to teach this aspect of the stroke.

So grab yourself a copy. We’ll include that in the links to the show notes. And thanks for being on. Yeah. Thanks, friend. 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.