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.

I like seeing what guys at the very top end like yourself are doing because it kind of makes you think, oh, there’s more that I can, there’s more that I can do here. And I don’t know if you’ve heard of a guy, Dave Goggins, he’s, he’s written this book recently and he used to be an ex-navy seal and now he’s a, does a lot of ultra marathon running, but he’s just really hard guy. And he talks about like he did this 100k race and it was the first one that he did. He hadn’t trained for it really at all. And he ended up just completely ruining himself and he was throwing up blood and everything and just there’s sort of no filter with the pain. He just go through it and he just wouldn’t think twice about it. And it’s kind of after hearing stuff like that, it’s a, it’s good motivation to, you know, you can do it. It’s just, it’s really, it’s so mental compared to physical. Obviously, the physical is important, but a lot of it is upstairs. You know,

what’s happening? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, is it, I mean, did you, do you ever find that when you’re training that it’s, it’s just a matter of just getting to the pool and getting it done and not overthinking? Yeah, if you’re feeling tired and you’re Yeah, absolutely. Well, sometimes it’s just easy. It’s good to go to training and to be told sometimes that’s all you can do. And that’s that’s a achievement, you know, getting up at quarter to five or four or whenever you’re getting out and then just going and doing what you’re told and getting through the set. Sometimes that’s it. And sometimes you can really push it feeling great. And, you know, you’ve had a double shot coffee or whatever before training and you’re really ready to go. So you push it extra hard and you get fitter and stuff. But sometimes just turning up is better than not turning up at all.

Well, one of the things, well, I noticed from your video by, by Fatal, you know, he would, you know, he’d lay on his stomach and he’d put his arms up and he’d show like what angle he could get his arms up. And so where I noticed it is on the front top of my shoulders on each one, that’s that’s my tight spot. And so one of the things I’ll do is like I’ll lay on a roller, a tube, I’ll lay on at my spine and I’ll lay my back. And then I kind of put my arms out to the side and put them up over my head and kind of rotate them and try to hit that position. And I’ll even have my daughter hold my arms a little bit. And I don’t do it every day, but maybe like, you know, two or three times a week for about 10 minutes just to especially after a hard swim that day, or the night before. And that really helps. That helps loosen me up and it helps when I get into to water quite a bit. So now I can work on my pole. Yeah, that’s that’s excellent. It makes such a difference even, as

you said, three times a week of 10 minutes. Same thing with strength training like I’ve been taking these these younger kids sort of twice a week here just locally. And I’ve been doing a little bit of strength work with them about it’s only about a 25 30 minute workout, but it just gives them this this base level of strength. And it’s the same thing with with flexibility is you just want this sort of base level that makes a huge difference if you’re not doing any at the moment. So you don’t need to do three times an hour a week. It’s just that little bit can really change things, especially if you’re on the bike, you’re in TT position, even running, the shoulders get so tight. And I experienced that when I was doing triathlon a couple of years ago that it just really changes the way that you feel. So you just want to make sure that you’re keeping on top of that mobility, which yeah, which is makes a big, big difference. And, you know,

sometimes when I’m running clinics will do like one of the first drills we do is just this really simple front kick drill with the arms out in front. And one of the first things we work on is that train tracks position with the hands directly in line with the shoulders. And with about, you know, sort of one in 10, two out of 10 people, they can’t actually get their arms straight because they’re so tight through their, through their upper traps and so tight through the shoulders. And that’s really limiting from a drag perspective, but it’s also going to be limiting from a catch and pull perspective. So I’d be curious as to is to see what how much of an impact that actually has. And I mean, I’ve seen it have a big, big impact with a lot of swimmers. But yeah, it’d be interesting to see what what percentage of improvement comes from just the mobility alone. And then the technical side of things too. So that’s, yeah, that’s

really good to good to hear. I remember some of the parents talking about drafting and it took me three years to actually understand what that was. And it’s just it’s just completely different. So I think one of the things that helps with that is just getting the experience in the open water, you just can’t you can’t beat the experience in in training and and racing open water. But then there are certainly those those stroke changes and what sort of changes have you made in your stroke to to go open water? Have you changed? Have you been able to to change that in the last couple of years as you’ve gotten more and more experience in racing? Yeah, one of the things that I battle over the last about 18 months or so is I ended up developing a really, really long, slow kind of catch up style stroke. And I did this because one of the first big swim projects that I did, I want to say it was 2013 or 14. Basically when I became

like a proficient swimmer, I wanted to set a bit of a mark in my life that that marked a turning point in my life where growing up I was always quite afraid of the water. I overcame that as I got into triathlon and I wanted to have that that stamp of approval that said I’m not afraid of the water anymore. I’ve changed my life. I decided to do a 27 kilometer open water swim. And I did that. And a few years later, we, a couple friends and I, we did another open water swim. This one was 37 kilometers. And in training for that, I trained myself just to go long and slow and be as loose and relaxed as possible. And what I developed was this long catch upy glidy, pausing, like kind of a pretty pool stroke, but really wasn’t very good for anything besides going long and slow. And over the last 18 months or so, I’ve tried to make that a lot scrappier, a lot quicker with the turnover, try to get that into the 70s and 80s, and

sometimes even set the tempo trainer up to 100 and see if I can hold that for five or six strokes. And also, in addition to just getting rid of that pause at the front of the stroke, having like firmer arms, I don’t really know a good swim term to describe it, but like, just being more forceful with the water, instead of letting the water kind of turn me into a noodle and just going with it to conserve energy for those nine hour swims, being more forceful and punchy, which you commented on, I still have a long way to go. But if you had seen me two years ago, I looked like a 80 year old guy in the park in the pool. That was just like, just out for like, oh, I’m out for a little, little morning swim. And I’m trying to get away from that.

What would you say to someone who has who would look at your calendar, and they’ll see it on the website, and they go like, I can’t say I can’t structure my every single single minute there because you know, I’m more spontaneous. I want to be able to do things on the fly. Can they structure in free time? Or can they structure in going to the movies or time where they’re not actually where there’s nothing set? What’s what’s your recommendation for people who feel like they want a bit of spontaneity in their week? Well, I do that. Don’t take it that I, by saying I structure everything in my day doesn’t mean I have times where I don’t have anything in there. So as an example, I had an hour today in the calendar free before you and me speaking, and I went and sat down by the fire and had to think about what we were going to do. That wasn’t in the calendar. It was just an hour block that was free. So that’s the first point. The second

point is I try and have nothing in the calendar on the weekend apart from sometimes I’ll do maybe one client meeting for someone who can’t meet during the week or and then I train on a Sunday. So that is in the calendar. But apart from that, I don’t put anything in an electronic calendar for the weekend. I use a totally different system. So I’m not feeling like I’m at work on the weekend. So I use an old fashioned bit of paper. And on Friday night, what I do is I sit down with my wife and I say, OK, these are the things and I just sort of rule it into Friday and Saturday old fashioned notepad and I just say, OK, I got three hours of training on Sunday. I’ve got a teacher class on Saturday morning. Other than that, my time’s ours. What do you want to do? What do I need to do for you? What do I need to get done at the house? If we had kids, I’d be like who’s taking the kids to football. And then she’ll say, well, I’ve got stuff I need to do on Sunday morning. So

can you train Sunday morning and then we have the afternoon together? And on the sheet of paper, I just draw that up and I’ll leave it on the kitchen bench. So that is about as spontaneous as I get. But back to your sort of question about what other people can do is I would say when you’re planning in your calendar, one thing you could do is color code things. So that’s what I use Google is very good for that as well is just right clicking and color coding what I would call really important activities and things that are not a high priority. And if you need to shift things, the things that you need to shift or make room for other things are those ones that aren’t a high priority. And it’s similar. It’s a similar concept to key sessions, routine sessions or optional sessions with your training. So if if your listeners, you know, think that every session is a critical or a key session in their training, if they’re a

triathlete, well, that’s probably the wrong approach. So even though I am generally 100% compliant, if I feel like my week is chalking up and I need to drop a session, I have sessions in my plan that are critical key sessions that I must do. And then I have sessions that I can drop out and you can take the same approach with things in your life as well. But I would always advocate having spare time in the calendar. And it’s actually blocked as free time. So you, you know, if you’re getting a bit stressed or a bit anxious about getting shit done, you actually allocate maybe towards the back end of the week. And this is what I do on a Thursday and Friday, I allocate time that’s just like blocked. Where clients can’t book me. And it’s just a gap in the calendar that if I need to catch up on things, or if I want to go for a walk, or do something spontaneous, even though it’s sort of maybe not spontaneous, because you’ve already got the

time blocked, it’s more like, here’s some downtime where I can do other things that aren’t necessarily in my calendar that have come up during the week.

One thing that I’ve found to be quite useful to without any devices is, so I was, I was driving for 19 hours, this was about four weeks ago, I was going on family holidays, I had a lot of time to kill in the car. And so I was, I was just doing some different breathing exercises. And one of them was, I was trying to see how long I could do the inhale for. So just like a very long inhale. And I got it up to, I got up to 90 seconds. So it’s just 90 seconds of an inhale. It took me a while to get there. But I sort of started out at about 45 seconds and then progressively get to to a minute and then a minute 15 and eventually got to about a minute 30 on the last one. And so I found doing that with this slow inhale and then I make sure that my I’m starting from down low. So using the diaphragm, filling in, like in through the belly, and then it sort of expands up to the lungs. And by the end of it, after 90 seconds, my my chest is out

my stomach’s out, it’s sort of as big as I can get. And I find that that expansion of the chest and the stomach to, for whatever reason, when I was training for the next four weeks, after doing these exercises quite a bit over the course of a few days, I just found that my, my output could be a lot I could sustain a much higher output without feeling like I was getting tight. So I was just a lot more in control of my breathing. So I found that that that exercise alone was was hugely beneficial. So it’s got it’s something I’m going to keep doing more when I’m in the car, because it’s you can’t really do it day to day or in the workplace. It’s a bit weird. But yeah, just focusing on your breathing is is a huge one that I think is often not not considered too too much, especially compared to your typical weight training or whatever it might be. Because it’s, you know, it’s the thing that we all just do subconsciously, but we never really stop and think about our

breathing and control it. And I think this respiratory muscle training and even just intentional breathing and long inhales, long exhales, I find that stuff can be very, very useful.

You’re absolutely right. And that’s really impressive 90 seconds. And before we move on, you bring up a great point in that we do have downtime. Hopefully we’re alone because you’re right, you can’t take the power breathe that work or, you know, on transit. But when we do have downtime, or you can’t work out on a particular day for whatever reason, you can use these exercise modalities to compensate for the missed workout, you could do breath training, and you can do occlusion or blood flow restriction training. And you get at least some training effect on those when we have downtime when we’re commuting.

And what did you do to to lock in those changes as habit and change that that muscle memory? Because it’s easy to, you know, change something once. But then it’s very easy to fall back into into old habits. So how did you make those changes?

Yeah, so from since the camp, you know, almost every single session that I’ve done by my open water, I’ll get in and do 500 meters of drills. So, you know, the five drills that I took away from it, I’ll do 50 meter drill, then just swim back with the fins on with the snorkel on and focus on my stroke. And I think, and then going forward, and through my sets that I do in training with the kick, no, sorry, with the poor boy and with the hand paddles, I’ll do all of those with a snorkel. So I can really focus on my stroke. I don’t have to worry about the breathing side of things. And I think for me, I’ve found really focusing on that stroke with the setup of the drills at the start to just for me being able to remember the points that I have to focus on, then going through the session, focusing on, you know, the high elbow and the catch in the hand entry and not putting on the brakes. And, you know, two, three

times a week doing those drills has really helped me to actually implement it in a race situation. And how did you feel in the the first couple of weeks? Was it was it one of those changes that made you feel better straight away? Or did it feel a bit unusual and and worse? What, how was it for you?

I think, yeah, my my speed didn’t change initially. A few bits and pieces, some of them felt good, some of them felt bad, and still even now, you know, I try to focus on lengthening out and you know, the head position that we talk about when you’re at the clinic. And I still forget about that because it wasn’t one of my main points that I had to think of. But I was swimming along and it’ll just come into my head. And I’ll make that change. And, you know, even still, it feels weird to do a few of these things. But it is starting to come or become more second nature, which is really good. And then, you know, obviously, since then, been watching videos and trying to implement a bit of the Serafe one you’re talking about with Josh and,

you know, again, I forget about that. I don’t know the drills associated with that. But I kind of, by watching the video, I kind of understand the dynamics of it and what it should feel like and what it should look like. So, you know, I’ll think about that halfway through a length and I’ll try to add that in as well. And you can certainly feel the difference. But for me, I think going forward, something like that there’s really going to help take it to the next level as well.

Yeah, it can take a little while to develop that, especially if they haven’t currently got that in their stroke, that coordination, it’s going to be pretty awkward for two or three weeks at least. And but they’ll probably find over the course of a couple of weeks, they start to get it more and more. And they’d notice when they, they get it, they feel like, all right, man, that was that was good. I could feel that sort of flow coming into the stroke. And what I find with the with freestyle that that can help with people to kind of progression in a way that they can can go through is so first of all, you want to make sure that you’re reaching out enough, you’re rotating your your torso and your hips correctly. So for generally, it’s going to be about 4045 degrees through your shoulders, rotation side to side. And the hips will be about sort of 3035 roughly that’s a bit less than the shoulders. Now, if they’re in that position, then then they’ve got a good

chance of having that Serapa effect come into play. But what can help them in freestyle is to really make use of it, you want to get your catch. So the sort of downwards tipping of their hand or the fingertips, get that to sink up with the downwards kick of your leg on the same side. And that’s going to help initiate that rotation to the to the other side. So if you can get the correct rotation, you can get the catch and the downwards kick to sink up, then then you it’s going to make everything a whole lot easier. So I find there sort of two, two things that you need to have in place to get the effect of it. Otherwise, you’re kind of it’s going to be hard to do. Yeah, no. And I think, like you said, if you if you try and sometimes teaching it like step by step can be can be confusing, because we tend to think a lot of people so over analytical that they sort of their mind gets stuck on, you know, if you tell someone to throw the ball, and then you

say, well, before you throw gently rotate your hips to 30 degrees, now rotate it’s like, you know, if you just say, just throw the ball, and they go, okay, you want me to do this? And they go, yes, then they get the movement. So I mean, that’s where you’re coaching. You can see, you know, straight away, like this is actually confusing the person. It’s funny, because it’s such a natural movement. It’s just that we’ve been so programmed by the fitness industry to isolate movements. And I think we’ve got that’s what we’re trying to get back to functionality again.

Yeah. And I think from a lifestyle lifestyle perspective, you looks like you’re living a pretty good lifestyle with a lot of travel involved. Obviously surfing a lot in some very nice locations and and not really broken down in the sense of just the ongoing training where your body just really you want that recovery, you want that sleep. So how have you sort of have you found that over the last couple of years and compared to maybe some of the other athletes that you’ve you’ve seen, like, what’s the difference between you and maybe someone who’s doing 10, 10 sessions a week, but they might be doing 60 70 days a week. Yeah, no, it’s I mean, there’s a lot of things different. I feel I feel very blessed that I one, I can afford to travel. This is really the first year where I’ve been able to do as much travel as I have. It’s been incredible. I mean, I’ve already logged, I think, almost a little over 20,000 miles

this year, just flying back and forth racing the champion series and pro series and aeronostrum and set of Koli. And then, you know, I, I think one thing that really sets me what makes it different for me is a frame of mind. I think mentally, I know, like, I, well, I personally love it. Like I want I love to travel. I love racing. I love being abroad. As much as I do miss the surf, like our surf reports the last couple of weeks have been amazing. And I have, but it’s one of the things that gives me life. And so I’m excited when I get to go and travel to wherever it may be. And I think a lot of athletes, at least a lot of swimmers I know, aren’t really that eager to travel all the time. You know, it’s I think there’s this. It’s just kind of a something that’s been kind of conditioned into the athletes is that we just we train for a long period of time. We get we stay at home and enjoy our time. And I do I enjoy being

home. But you know, there’s there’s a certain kind of like okay, you have to enjoy it in order for it to work out. And I think I’ve been successful with it up to now, because I’ve enjoyed it so much.

I was just talking to to Wayne Goldsmith and he’s kind of almost a consultant to a lot of different sports on how to keep kids in sport. And we’re just talking about the with younger kids that there’s a big focus on just getting them to do the laps and like, and he he he he reckons swimming is is the is the least can be the least fun sport for kids because if they can have two hours in the pool, and it might just be grinding it out day after day, it’s early mornings, don’t really get to chat with your friends when you’re doing it. So compare that to say soccer, for example, where even if you are training three hours a day, you still get to chat with your friends and it’s a team sport. So what can you do? What can coaches do to keep kids in sport? And it doesn’t matter if a kid’s got this awesome aerobic base from 12 to 16 years of age, and he’s got this great Bo2 max, if you’re sitting at home at 17 playing fortnight, because the only kid you can’t, you

know, the only person you can’t get to get to do anything is the person who’s quit the sport. So what can you do to keep it fun? And I think even from a adult sort of, they typically do the things they want to be doing. So it’s a bit of a different story. But if you’re not, if you’re not having fun and you’re not enjoying yourself, then you’ve lost already. So you do those things that you enjoy and and don’t get too caught up in in things if it gives you, if it makes you anxious, if it causes you to stress over over these little things, just, you know, you’ve only got the one life. So you want to live it, you want to enjoy it. And I think, you know, that’s that’s why I think it’s important not to get to use the data, but don’t get too caught up in it and having someone like, so yeah, you will look that to. So this is this is what I want you to do. Now go out, go out and do it, try and hit this heart rate. But you know, leave leave

the rest to to you leave the stress to to you or looking deeply into it. There’s no reason why where you’re at today has to be where you’re going to be for the next five, 10, 20 years. Oh, it’s exactly right. And even even these that I find it quite funny, like, especially my grandparents always, oh, but what about your law degree? I want to put you and I said, like my nan, I said, sort of something like Nan, like my law degree is not going anywhere. And I’d rather I’d rather try and potentially fail as something that I really care about, rather than never try it all and just go into something that I don’t not want to do, but am not as interested about. And like, I just I took a chance. And that’s the thing. Laws are pretty good backup to have. Marketing is a pretty good, you know, I’m pretty sure that should all this fail as I’m constantly worried that it will, I’ll have I’ll have things to back myself up with. And I think

the coaching thing is really, really interesting too, because I think when I started, you’re right, I was like, I have no right to be telling people what to do. Like I, I barely know myself a lot of the time. And I think for myself, I was very, I was very quick to put this label. I coach beginner athletes. Oh, don’t I’m not a real coach. I just I just worry about people who are trying to lose weight. Like that’s that I’m just I’m just helping them. And it wasn’t until I started to have athletes go better and better. And I think I had a guy coached last year and he went four hours 20 on daybuilder 70.3. And I’m not I’m not claiming responsibility for that. He’s an incredible, Luke is an incredible athlete. But it made me go, this isn’t a beginner athlete. Like that’s pretty that’s pretty impressive for a first and I’ve coached him for nearly two years. Yeah, we just there is just so much information we can get from

athletes and all of that. We also use like kind of 2D 2D motion capture where we actually calibrate to certain space and can actually give you an indication as to, you know, kick frequencies, kick amplitude and underwater kicks, different metrics and stroke to and we could look at all of that in massive depth. But in the end of the day, it’s how you interpret that information is key. And I find a really happy space with dealing with information and sharing the information that I feel is going to make the most impact to athlete and coach. And that’s probably the space I kind of like dealing in. And ultimately, through my years working with swimming, it’s always comes down to fundamentals. What are they fundamentally doing correctly? And that needs to be in place first. And I mean, obviously the audience from your view, I think, you know, it’s quite easy to kind of get caught up in what everyone else is doing. And the guy in the lane next

to you might be doing something which you think might better suit you or it just looks great because his swimming five minutes quicker over his, you know, his initial swim in a triathlon that you must be doing what he’s doing. But ultimately, we just need to go back to consider what we’re doing well first, what got us there in the first place. And then ensure that we have all those fundamentals in place that we can build off of those to obviously get better or more out of what we’re trying to do in the end of the day. This actual technique when people get involved in it is definitely I liken it to those catcher brushes when you’ve got some oil on your driveway, and you go out there and you get one of those high pressure water turbo things. And when you turn it on, the water pressure coming out of that thing is immense. And when you blast the concrete, you know, you get off years of dirt off that thing. So this angie

breath is really in my mind a bit like taking to your body with one of those catcher brushes. And I’ve talked about it on a physical level so far. But really, the main approach here is on a mental level of what we’re doing is actually sort of helping our body block and a clear out certain blockages in the brain. And like you said, you know, like people do approach these a lot of these techniques of when things get a little bit tough, like the idea is, oh, look, I better, I give up, better back off here. And I suppose that’s where some of the ice immersion work comes in after this sort of work or in addition to this work, where some of the the Wim Hof technique where people have actually then, you know, keep going with this energy breath and then they move to dunking themselves in the ice. And then if you’ve ever heard your brain tell you to get out, you will definitely hear it then. All our automatic subliminal programs that are in our brain

that tell us all sorts of stuff, you know, on a small subtle level for the swimmers, it might be the bit, you know, all the can’t do is, you know, like I can’t, I can’t do that time or I can’t stay in the pool for long enough or I can’t execute that stroke pattern. All of those things are really automatic programs that are embedded in our brain. And some of those programs actually help us live. I mean, we probably experienced the sort of times where sometimes we’ve been driving home and, you know, we’re busy thinking about something. And then so we realized, oh, wow, turning in the driveway, you know, we’ve actually managed to get home with very little conscious thought of what we’re doing. And what that actually is all those incredible automatic processes that are in our body that can run our live and run run for us a program like getting home, making a coffee or doing something in our work life that we can do pretty easily. But on the

flip side, like we can have a whole heap of automatic programs in our brain that actually read detrimental to how we perform. And you might sort of have an old coach or an or an old sort of, you know, other person you’ve coached again, trained against that has mentioned a few really sort of important comments that probably didn’t stick with you that well and maybe left a little bit of a negative effect in your brain that you now unconsciously believe is true. And exercise, so breathing exercise like this part of what it’s trying to do is to uproot some of those laid down programs. And like you said, when you’re in the breathing method, what’s happening is it’s changing a little bit of body chemistry that’s altering some of your brain processes, assessing and it’s allowing some of the sort of locked in emotions that we hold against ourselves to be released out of the system. So commonly during this energy breath, if we sustain

it for long enough, you know, we can actually get to a point where we can feel our body releasing some of these emotions. And sometimes, like you said, it is absolutely laughter. And I’ve been in one class myself where, you know, one girl started laughing, and then another girl started laughing, then I’m laughing and the whole 12 of us are in absolute hysterics like and we are all still breathing, trying to get through it. And then, you know, that wafts off. And then before you know it, some in the corner is crying, you know, someone’s crying and then like and then the mood changes. Now that group energy is incredible when you do breath work, but you can achieve all of that sort of stuff in your own space, doing your own breath work as well. And basically your own emotional energy then gets a chance to come out. And we sort of hear a lot of people talk about, they feel a bit blocked or they feel like, you know, some thing in the

background is holding them back. You know, you have some guys, you know, all girls, you know, should limit it to just guys, you know, people in general like, you know, feel like they’ve got some pent up aggression or, or bottled up emotions. And some of those things have come from real life traumas that are actually completely real. And their body has hasn’t been able to get rid of those traumas at the time. And they’re sitting as little things in their, in their body that actually don’t benefit them, that actually sort of work against them. So a lot of those little things you can feel definitely in some of these breath work sessions.

Guys like Craig Alexander or Jan Frodeno or those guys, like they truly are some of the best athletes on the planet, Barnaan, because they mightn’t be the strongest or the fastest, but they suffer the longest. And I think that’s something that sort of is overlooked. And it’s something that draws me in every time. Yeah. And they like, they make it look so easy, like you look at Jan at Kona, makes it look so easy. And you think, oh, OK, it’s like, it’s another day out for him. But inside he, he’s got to be suffering so hard to, to be able to put up to hold that speed for that long and to be able to do it so consistently as well. Like he’s just, he’s just incredible, especially over the last few years, look at how far ahead he is of the rest of the field. Like it’s just that. Oh, yeah. It’s a real. And so you got. Yeah, sorry. There’s some, yeah, there’s just and there’s some guys in different sports that may get seen that way.

Like Phelps is the same and and Grand Hacker was one. Like, like you look at, you watch his swim in Athens in 2004 and he just looks so good the whole way through. He makes it look so comfortable and then he gets out and he almost collapses when he stands up on the block and and like Crowie was another one of those in triathlon and there’s guys like Shannon Eckstein in surf Ironman and they’re the guys that like it hurts them, but they just don’t care. Like it, there’s a goal that’s more important than the fact that it hurts. Like and a few people have said to me in the past like pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional and that’s the attitude. Like they don’t suffer. They’re in pain, but they’re not suffering. Whereas people like me or your regulars like we suffer through the last couple of hours and I think that makes it worse. Whereas they’re in pain, they understand it and they just move on. And I think that’s a part of being a professional

athlete that is overlooked the ability to just deal with it and get the job done anyway. Absolutely. Yeah, I couldn’t agree with that more. And yeah. And sometimes I think when you are breaking things down to such a simplistic level, people can feel like they’re going back to the beginning. You know what I mean? They feel like, oh my gosh, like I’m literally a beginner again, like I’m beyond this sort of thing. So that’s also very, very scary for a lot of students is when you’re trying to teach them the scales before they play Beethoven, you know, they can feel like, my God, I’m starting all over again. But as you and I both know it’s not that at all. It’s just, yeah, it’s just getting things correct. And it’s amazing. I mean, I always say that when someone is getting a lesson from me and with feel like they feel like they’re being ripped apart, it might only be a relatively simple change. But as you know, the way something feels and the way

it is a completely different things, but they can actually feel like when you’re changing it in their brain, they all they start to say to themselves, oh my God, I’m five years away from getting this. So they really they it feels like it’s five years away. But if they actually do the right work and put their time and put the time in, it can happen in months if you know what I mean. So it can feel like it’s starting all over again. But if they just stick to their processes, it can actually happen a lot faster than what they’re imagining it’s going to be. 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.