open water swimming is very, can feel like a very different sport in a way in terms of or different stroke compared to the pool swimming which which I’m sure you’re aware of and you can be a very good pool swimmer and an average open water swimmer so it’s really important to get to get good in the open water some considerations that I would normally teach my athletes is obviously it’s not calm and it’s not flat and there’s going to be more turbulence in the water you’ve got the surface chop you might have currents you might have tied and all these things that you’re dealing with so I think it lends itself to a less perfect sort of stroke which can be good for for most people 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 hey Brenton here if you ever find yourself uncomfortable in the

open water and not feeling that calm when you’ve got other people around and not knowing where to sit or where to draft off people to be most effective at it this episode’s for you I joined the low tide boys Chip and Chris on a podcast and they asked me all about the science of drafting so on this episode I get stuck into that so you know exactly where to sit in a pack or with other people around to maximize the draft as well as how to prepare for this stuff if you don’t have much access to the open water so I hope you enjoy this episode there’s a lot of value for anyone who’s training for open water swims or doing any sort of triathlon racing this episode is filled with things that will help you maximize your next open water race just give your heads up we’ve added some dates for our 2026 camps for the male dives and also for Thailand I haven’t released this anywhere else yet I’m just giving you the heads up on the podcast if you want to join me next

year on one of those camps to work on your swimming then there’s a few dates that we’ve added at effortless swimming dot com forward slash camps see you there all right coming to us from the future our friend Brenton Ford founder of effortless swimming their second time back on the show welcome back yeah thanks to have me I’ll tell you what the future is very exciting wait and see what’s coming tomorrow we’ll be there it’s amazing so we asked you to come back last time you’re on was episode 237 if folks are at home want to check that one out was just like a 50 minute just stream of consciousness like knowledge bombed super helpful for us in the show super self-serving we asked you to come back on Brenton because a listener of the show reached out and be like hey what is the definitive you know take on drafting during swim run obviously you know about swim run we wear a tether try to stay in contact in

the water so we brought you on and basically just just tell us tell us like the rules but before that we thought it’d be more sense to kind of like branch it out a little bit for open water swimming so generally you know when you’re thinking about swimming you’re thinking about open water swimming so why don’t we start with sort of like general considerations around open water swimming and how you think about you know kind of like that part of the sport and swim run yeah open water swimming is very can feel like a very different sport in a way in terms of or different stroke compared to the pool swimming which which I’m sure you’re aware of and you can be a very good pool swimmer and an average open water swimmer so it’s really important to get to get good in the open water some considerations that I would normally teach my athletes is obviously it’s not calm and it’s not flat and there’s going to be more turbulence in the water you’ve got the surface chop you might have

currents you might have tide and all these things that yet you’re dealing with so I think it lends itself to a less perfect sort of stroke which can be good for most people so that’s scrappier sort of freestyle can often do a lot better some of the main changes that I’d normally recommend are in terms of your recovery you might need to be a little bit higher over the top a little bit faster and be a little bit more assertive with it as well over the water just because if you’re if you’re trying to be really smooth and a low hand recovery and trying to be perfect with the entry you’re probably going to get knocked around a bit so if you look at the very best triathletes and probably the same for swim runners I would imagine is just that arm recoveries like it’s over it’s in fairly quick and you will still extend and you’ll still reach but you’re probably going to start the catch a bit sooner as well so as

you enter and you’re extending forwards you’re not going to take too long if there is much chop there you still need to reach out but you’re probably going to roll into that next part of the stroke a little bit a little bit quicker typically we’ll find and I’d say maybe with paddles this this might be a little bit different but typically for say it’s triathletes or open water swimmers their stroke rate will be higher than it would in the pool so for me if I am going like my race pace in the pool it might I might be about 65 66 strokes per minute but if in the open water with a wetsuit on that would step up to about 74 75 individual strokes per minute so that’s fairly common that we that we see and it’s probably going to be the same for a lot of paper in the open water as well well yeah that’s a considerable 10 10 plus strokes on average more more per minute there and then yeah that’s a good good kind of framework to add in and it’s certainly yeah with the paddles on you

can’t be having a nice low low cast out front you’re gonna you’re gonna get knocked around that hand the paddle is gonna get taken off a different way there when you think about siding in open water I know for some people this is kind of really something that gives them a lot of lot of fits how often are you recommend siding for open water you know especially swim run you might not necessarily see hey here’s the exact buoy where it is it might be kind of siding off a piece of land or something that isn’t as well defined yeah I think you need to decide as often as you need to to see where you’re going so that might be really regularly that might be every six strokes or eight strokes if it is quite quite choppy because you think about going even if you go say a meter two meters off course that can really start to add up and I think if you can cite well if you can if you can do that well without breaking

your rhythm then you’re not really going to slow down much if at all so it’s worthwhile siding probably more regularly than you than you might think and just some of those strategies like you probably can’t see the buoys out there if there is buoys or maybe you’re siding for an island just trying to get lay the land before the before you do the race and it might be siding a tree or the top of an island or the side of a hill just using that to your advantage so we ran a camp in the Whitsundays last week and it was an open water swim camp so we had a bunch of swimmers there and the very first thing we did was just working on siding and I’d say about half of those athletes were siding what I call incorrect incorrectly they were they were breathing and then throwing their head and looking forwards and it’s a way to be able to see but it’s it’s very hard to keep your rhythm doing that so what what we took them through was sites and then breathe so it’s also called the

rolling breath so on one stroke you lift up lift up as high as you need to to see where you’re going and then on the next stroke you’ll turn to breathe and you’ll find that you lose very little speed doing it and it can feel really rhythmic and very easy to do if you do that well you might need to go a couple of strokes head up if you just don’t know where you’re going but that site and breathe or rolling breath would be the thing to get down pat especially before your next race if you if you feel like you can’t do it and it took about 10 15 minutes with those guys to get them sorted get them to be able to do it and it was almost like trying to rub your tummy and pat your head it’s like it takes a bit to coordinate but they got there and I think it’s something that ultimately is fairly easy to develop once you just put in a bit of time is there a drill to kind of develop that like in a pool that you’d recommend if you don’t have access to open water yeah so we were

going we just broke it down so I got them to swim and then one stroke just lift up go crocodile eyes and then back down so just a really quick look and and just get used to that so we did that three or four times and then we got them into sight and then on the next stroke breathing so just breaking it down that way and if you breathe to the I mean there’s actually different ways to do it depending on the speed you’re going so let’s say you breathe to the left only it might be that you are siding when that left hand is reaching forwards and then as then as you sort of go through your catch you’ll then roll to breathe on that next stroke so if you’re going slower you’ve kind of got more time to extend out on it but if you’re going faster with a faster rating it might actually be that you’re kind of lifting up as that hand is sort of catching and then you’re going and then you turn into breathe so it will just depend on the speed that you’re going but not what I was

starting with was the side that you would breathe to use that hand to extend out and press down on the water a little bit to help you lift up and then breathe to that side so for me I breathe to the left left hand was pressing down to help raise the head and then turn on the next stroke

I love that and yeah I mean that’s something just like Chris mentioned I know not everyone has access to open water but this is certainly something you can practice in in your lap pool swimming and you know work in and hey do whatever 10 by 100 but then do some siding on maybe that first 25 or the middle 20 of whatever you want to want to mix it up but that can really help kind of reinforce those movements and that way during the race it’s not your first time trying to figure out like oh how do I how do I do this it’s kind of already baked into your to your rhythm yeah definitely and that’s something that’s really easy to do in the in the pool and I think we might might have spoke about it last time but just trying to get your times as even as possible from when you’re not siding to when you do introduce your siding so if you can get your hundred times within maybe two seconds if you’re doing a hundred meters and you’re not siding

and then you introduce your siding and you might do it five six times within that hundred if you can be within about two seconds you’re probably doing quite quite well with it nice yeah yeah I’m gonna bring the stopwatch out next time on you Chris okay sounds good sounds good I want to go back to something that you mentioned earlier because definitely for swim run it is a bit of unique when compared to triathlon triathlon you know you got the big Dorito chip inflatables in the water you can kind of very easy see that and you’re doing your little rectangle or whatever the swim might be but in a swim run especially for open water Chris and I it’s always really served us very well to like stop take a beat one two seconds and say like okay here’s where we’re going and like we’re going to this tree or we’re going to this building there and that’s always helped us like kind of check in and give us something to like really orient around

when we’re swimming and that way when you’re in the thick of it and you aren’t getting tossed around you can kind of always look for that same spot we might take up another second or two kind of before you get in the water but it saves you like definitely a lot of time from getting lost and and dinged around in the in the water there so just another little tip how it served us oh that it’s so so worthwhile taking that extra couple of seconds to do it on this this camp last week we had everyone was got their siding down pretty well and like they sided quite regularly so rarely would they go off course but we had this one swim on the last day where it was between the mainland and an island and there was like there was our boat just kind of in between the two and everyone was swimming and then there was one swimmer who just started to veer off into the like the channel between the island and the mainland

and he was like a good 30 meters off to the side and he was just heading out and there’s a strong current going there too oh no all right like let’s uh he has not looked whatsoever so let’s let’s go and get him and drag him back in but it can happen before you know it and you know as soon as you switch off um you know and you just kind of get into um you start daydreaming then you can really go off course i think yeah if you can if you can just take that time it’s so worth it yeah i mean our mantra is like you know these races are already long enough let’s not swim any extra any extra meters or yards that we don’t have to so swimming straight is certainly i mean it’s a tactical advantage not just like a finish time advantage and yeah that’s that you’re you’re well served just knowing where i guess the other rule is like don’t get into the water until you know where you’re going right until you kind of have a good sense of where you’re going but

that kind of leads into you so in swimrun you know we’re drafting we’re wearing tethers um how do you think about drafting and yeah just tell us like what is the like what is the optimal way to draft yeah so in it’ll be probably a little bit somewhat different between triathlon open water swimming and swimrun so and i’ll explain why in swimrun you’re working with your partner obviously you’ve got your you’ve got your tether you’re working together and the slowest swimmer is going to be behind to to draft off the fastest swimmer if they’re yeah if they are different speeds sitting behind someone you can reduce your drag by about 25 percent if you’re sitting in the right spot it creates this sort of you know low pressure behind the the swimmer and it’s moving that water out of the way and then it sort of sucks the person behind along with the the swimmer in front so that’s the more efficient way to to draft and and the reason the other part of that is if

you’re drafting off the hip which is the other way that can be yeah you can still get quite a bit of sort of reduction in drag with it 10 to 15 percent you’re more being pushed by that their bow wave off the hips so you still certainly get that benefit you get that push but the downside of it is if you’re on someone’s hip you are often taking their water on that side of them so in their catch in their pull through if you’re pulling through in the same sort of water you’re actually slowing that person down which can be great if you’re trying to overtake them or beat them but as a swimrun pair you’re trying to work together so that’s why i’d suggest for most people to work on drafting behind now if you are say sitting not right at their hip but a little bit further back and just off to the side you can yeah you’ll still get some pretty good draft and that can be a good way to do it especially if there’s any sort of chop and wave so let’s say

you’ve got waves coming at you from the left the slowest from them might want to sit off to the right of the of the fastest from them and almost at like a 45 degree angle so not quite behind not quite at the hip but somewhere in between and just get protected a little bit from the waves also get that draft and it’s probably going to be a smoother smoother swim for them so that might be the easy way to do it especially if there is those waves and and more chop so i think it can change depending on the conditions and other things but as a general rule of thumb i’d suggest most people sit sit behind and you probably need to um you know one thing that i noticed at this camp and we see it all the time is like we try and get people to swim together as a group and it’s really up to the fastest swimmers in front to be aware of the slowest swimmers behind because if they just got their normal pace well then they’re probably going to lose the people behind

but if we’re working as a group then it’s up to the fastest swimmers to just maybe take a breath look behind on that breath and come back so it might be up to the swimmer in front to just have that awareness i mean you’ll have the tether so you’ll have a pretty good idea too um or you i don’t know i don’t know what you guys would normally do but whether you tap their feet every couple of strokes intentionally is there a sort of strategy that you guys would normally use for that yeah i yeah that’s it’s a good question um which remind me there’s a follow question of how far back you should be from from the person in front but but yeah so the way chipper and i go is you know i try to be on his feet and um you know i just hey if i’m on his feet i’m on his feet i’m tapping and it’s just like hey i’m just letting you know i’m here there’s no real you know i’m not trying to do anything other than just like just keep going uh but sometimes if i do need to get as

attention or if we are planning on switching uh you know we’ll have like some signal like hey if i tap you on the foot on the right foot like three times that means that i’m ready to take a pull or something and then he’ll kind of pull up or uh you know so we’ll have some signals like that but yeah but typically yeah not too much communication unless i think chipper’s going the wrong way then i’m like you know just backseat riding exciting which has happened i got a foggy goggle once and he’s like where are you going like where are you going dude i was trying to one eye one eye sighted wasn’t working too well that’s good that like yeah those sorts of signals uh yeah great way to great way to do it so um uh and you normally sit behind is that where you prefer to sit yeah yeah i prefer to be in the back yeah but i mean on your your stroke crest i mean you’re maybe three inches from my foot yeah you’re pretty you’re pretty close i try to

keep it close because i you know i also you know i want to make it as easy for chipper as possible so i don’t want the tether i don’t want him to feel like he’s actually pulling um but we know so one of our dear swimmer friends like their tether is super short and this guy he basically has his head in between the other person’s legs and he’s just doing this really wide stroke and i mean i don’t know that seems like a little aggressive to me but i’m curious like what is the optimal like should you just be tapping the person’s feet or is there is there something around like how close you are that you get more of the benefit of the of the draft yeah i mean that’s uh you’d really want to know the person if you if you head between your legs seriously first date first right it’s like yeah um the i mean really the closer the better if you look at um if you look at any sort of aerial footage of some as you can kind of

see that little like pocket that it creates behind someone where it sort of takes the water and then the other water pulls in so uh yeah the the closer the better really and i think if you’re having to adjust your stroke so you know hitting their feet you’re probably in a pretty good pretty good spot there but i mean um you still get you still obviously get draft three meters even five meters even a little bit further back you still get some well it’s gonna be a lot it’s gonna be a lot less so yeah if you can sit right on their feet i think that’s the the way to go um i’ve i’ve never been invited to swim with my head between someone’s leg so i couldn’t tell you how how much you can join us you can join anytime it’s a worth a trip from australia yeah um because i mean sometimes it does like i’m going back to on the bike days where you know hey when you’re in that great slipstream and the draft it feels

like oh man you’re you’re great you’re saving so many watts but then there is that that kind of space that can develop and if you get kind of like snapped off the back of that you’re just you’re like in not a good place so that’s kind of what what we’re trying to get to on the on the tether piece but it sounds like as close to you as close that you can get for your own personal and your partner’s personal comfort um you know that’s good yeah if it becomes a game of chicken you’re probably winning so yeah that’s uh uh yeah i think that the closer the better and um the thing with like sitting fairly close to like if you’re at behind yes you want to be sliding to make sure your partner’s staying on track but you can also just look forwards and look for the bubbles and look for the feet too um so it can sort of save you from from looking up and maybe slowing yourself down even more so that’s the other thing that uh yeah but uh and it’s also good to

probably play around with it a bit to see where you feel like you get the most draft but it’s most likely going to be as uh well just fingers at their feet yeah now you know you have a pull buoy in your leg so your legs some i mean i’ve gotten this feedback from a swim coach on deck about hey like my lower half just is just you know i’m not holding a good tauntness in my in my fishtailing a lot so i would assume that as the back person you might want to try to keep it pretty tidy is not you know kind of keep a nice streamline there i would assume that would be kind of a a good a good thing to suggest to folks as well if that’s just assuming yeah if you see uh yeah if you see the feet in front kind of doing that just stay in the middle of them it’s um i mean especially with with your shoes on with your pull pull buoy in it’s going to lend itself to a bit more of that sort of fishtailing anyway when everything sort of strapped in so um like normally it normally as a coach

should say keep you know obviously keep things centered you’re going to get a little bit of movement through the hips and things like that but i think what you’re doing it kind of lends itself to that quite a bit quite a bit more especially with not kicking and just the the drag from the shoes as well so um yeah that’s i think that’s just gonna that’s just gonna happen yeah keep it tidy back there chris keep it tidy i’ll try i’ll try i’ll try um you know i so so back at last this is now in november i i did a race with another partner because chipper was injured and i had to lead all the swims and this is the first time we’re out of lead all the swims in a race and i certainly gained new even more appreciation i already have a lot of appreciation be doing more appreciation for chipper for leading for doing so much of the yeoman’s work but he’s 10 years older than me so it’s fine he can handle it but uh but uh but you know it’s what i found interesting was like it obviously

takes more effort to be in the front than being in the draft but i also felt like it was um like i was i had to expend more mental more mental focus right in the back you can i’m citing i’m making sure we’re not messing around going straight but when you’re leading i felt like i was responsible for kind of all of it like making sure we’re swimming straight making sure we’re taking a nice tight line make sure i’m not running over any sort of underground obstacles or what underwater obstacles or whatever and i’m curious um you know do you have any strategies besides just like yeah maybe trying to alternate who’s leading the swims to kind of recover from some of that or or is there like you know some sort of mindset the that that you think would be helpful for people that are leading swims so just like kind of you know keep the main thing the main thing and not just over stimulating yourself with trying to keep to keep things together

yeah that’s a it’s a great point and late last year i i did like our state five kilometer championship race here and in and that was the first time i’ve actually or the first time in probably how do i know in probably like 20 years that i’ve done like sort of yeah like 5k race with that sort of level of swimmers and what i noticed so there was basically a group of about i don’t know eight to ten of us in the in the main pack and for four for 4k i did i didn’t really have to cite i didn’t have to think at all because i knew these these swimmers would be siding going straight and like that’s just the pack so i could just sit in and not have to think about it for 4k and it was it was one of the easiest swims i’ve done for that that 4k then as soon as i i i lost it i drifted off and for i moved about three meters off to the side lost the pack and the last k they were they were gone and that last k felt longer than the first

4k as a result of it and so the the mentality that i’d take into that is like if i’m the lead swimmer it’s like right this is this is on me this is my time and i yeah it’s up to me to to kind of set the pace a bit to make sure we’re going straight and i’m in charge here and i think just taking that responsibility and it’s like yeah this is this is my zone that that can kind of give you this like you know i don’t know not just kind of good good feeling of like yeah it’s my time to shine because the person at the back can’t really do a whole lot to help the person in front apart from just trying to minimize the minimize any sort of impact behind so and then i mean i haven’t really done a swim run for about 15 years i think but you know it could be that maybe in the run the other person goes in front and you can just kind of sit behind switch off a little bit and you know have that mental recovery a little bit because sometimes i don’t know if you find

find that with your running but you just uh even just sort of running behind someone you can kind of just switch off a bit so maybe you can return the favor favor that way is that what you guys tend to do or yeah chris is usually taking the charge on the runs all uh i will usually yeah i i kind of like what you were saying brenton i kind of take the i’m like oh this is a time to shine for me like let me let me you know show off all my swim fitness i have and kind of really charge out and then i charge out of the water uh you know blow my heart right up and then chris comes around and just takes takes the rest of it uh i’m trying to hang on for the rest of the run but yeah that learning that chris had you know we we’ve talked about applying that to our future races about say if we’ve had a couple swim you know runs and swims where the pace is kind of getting up there and someone is feeling a little bit more cooked than they want to be

take that next swim off and i mean you can really have five you know eight ten minutes of recovery on on the back and then you’re gonna kind of be be in a better better spot so i think overall yeah you might give up you know three seconds per hundred or one second or it’s probably really the same pace pretty much uh but the energy levels will be will be better matched for uh for the next couple legs following that so looking forward to deploying that strategy at some point yeah yeah not not too soon though yeah yeah like it’s amazing how much you know whether you’re training or whether you’re racing in the beginning you might feel heavy and then after like a k and a half you come good so i can like that energy levels can oscillate a lot through the uh yeah through through the race and so if you get that little bit of recovery you’re probably good to go again because i mean some of those races are hours and hours in the water and uh and on land right so

yeah yeah and it’s the type of thing where some of the races are so long you can feel great feel shitty feel great again feel great again yeah and then you know just like you just keep going back and forth and you just you know try to problem solve you know throughout it but uh but yeah you know i i think like again what the the lesson for me was like oh you know it’s obviously more work physically but sort of like mentally was more work and thinking about you know i really like like like that advice of just like hey just kind of just for whatever period it says you just kind of lean into it gotta do it so just like get through it and then find other other places where you can kind of like recover whether it’s on the run or the next swim or whatever it is so i think i think that’s a that’s a major pro tip right there

and like when we were doing this camp last week uh we’re doing a lot of a lot of pack swimming we’d get the slowsomers up the front to lead we’d get the middle swimmers there like we just circle around and one thing that i i found like when i’m at the front i’m just like yeah it’s like i’m i’m this i’m a dad and this this is my family behind me and i’m like there to protect them and work for them and stuff like that like just taking that sort of role when you’ve got there when you’re in charge uh yeah it’s like um being like class class leader or something in in school it’s just like it’s something that doesn’t really mean anything but you can take it to mean yeah as much as you want sort of thing so uh yeah whatever your ego needs yeah yeah and that’s a lot here so uh yeah that’s half of it you know it’s like once the kids birthday in elementary school they’re line leader so they’re they’re leading the line

they’re walking kids to the gym and everything similar situation um i don’t you know at least chris and i we kind of end up and we’re racing and and no man’s land between the front group and between some sort of mid pack um but for when you are trying to overtake in the water i i always remember these kind of feelings of like oh man we’re stuck back here let me let me just get around and like surge up but it’s easier said than done what sort of tips do you have for kind of making an overtake in open water or things you should like keep under consideration especially with someone attached to you and you’re literally trying to pass two two more bodies hmm i i mean what i generally i’d try and you know sit behind as long as you can to get that draft to come up to them and then in when you when you are overtaking it’s like i’d try and stay pretty fairly close to the other person in front and then once i sort of pass their hip

it’s like i want to get i want to get off to the side i want to get away from them so that they’re not then jumping jumping on on me so it’s like trying to be trying to be sneaky and you know sneak up on them surprise attack and then just kind of get off to the side and look they might jump across but i’m just using that as much as you can and like even uh like what we’ll find in a lot of swim races and triathlon races is of some people who are like you get the different groups going first and then you might have like a one fifteen swimmer who’s there with two minutes swimmers and they’re having to overtake them but even like even if they’re a lot slower you can still just come straight up behind them sneak past them and just kind of go around so even using just using that as much as you can that’s without any experience with being tethered to someone so curious to see what you guys well i’ll tell you i’ll tell you so tether being in the back

when we’re swimming in a pack and we’re passing people usually this is usually like first second swim type stuff yeah first yeah first swim leg or second swim it’s uh i it’s like my responsibility to make sure that no one crosses the tether because talk about wasting a ton of you get your tethers tangled it’s just it’s a huge mess it’s never happened to us but we’ve heard horror stories but i think one of the reasons that it hasn’t happened to us because i really treat you know if there’s a pack like i’m aggressively protecting the tether with my stroke changing my stroke rate sometimes even like doing like a like a real skip so i can just make sure that i can protect it if someone’s on the right uh you know not like being like a dick like sticking elbows but just making sure that i’m extending just to kind of protect the area because even if someone takes a stroke and just catches the tether if they’re wearing a paddle

it can get stuck in the paddle and it’s just like when someone loses the paddle and you know bad anyway just you don’t want any of that bad juju anywhere so so on the back is is you know i’ll see when we’re getting either into a pack or first swim and there’s just a lot of chaos happening and i’ll i’ll usually just make sure that i’m really close on chipper’s feet and being very cognizant of like my surroundings um i think that’s it i don’t know if i have any chipper if you have any more notes from the tether side yeah no i mean i think for that first one it’s usually trying to get kind of the clean air like clean water and not yeah trying to trying to get out in front of someone or or find a good pair of feet uh as well is helpful um but i like the sort of advice it reminds me of like a tour de france pass you know when they when they’re on the big mountains and they pass around they try to like really dive off to the side

and try to make it so they can’t get any any draft so you’re the way you explain that kind of reminded me of that but um yeah it’s just kind of really like a very very sergi feeling about really uh hitting kind of like a threshold pace to to really break out there and then you know kind of feeling off that tether like hey it how is chris is coming along here as well or is it like oh you know maybe maybe we need to pull back a little bit on it but and i think that’s where and that’s where communication too which is like you know one of the advantages of swimrun is that you have a teammate so you can actually strategize and really think through a lot of these things so you know depending how serious stripper and are taking the race like we’ll be like okay this first swim like what are you like are you gonna just do what you usually do and kind of have like dancing your pants and really want to get going

or like what’s going on um you know and that and that’s super helpful and i was like yeah i’m gonna hit it on this first swim and you know usually it’s i’m gonna have uh you know my left my life flashed for my eyes because i wore the wrong wetsuit and the water’s super cold um but you know regardless it’s like okay i kind of already know what chipper has in mind or he’ll just tell me like i’m feeling good i’m gonna go for it and because you know we’ve trained so much together he can say yeah i’m gonna hit this at like 85 percent and have like some general idea of what that means um but but yeah that’s that’s like an experience thing that uh that works for us but but brenton i’m curious like you know tipper’s talking about like surging in open water and doing all this stuff is there like um again i bring it back to the pool because that’s where most people are training for these events like is there like a

drill or a set that you that you’d recommend to just help kind of develop that like surge especially because you know we would be doing it with paddles so you know it could be you could be in the middle of a thousand-yard swim and you feel like all right now’s the time to really punch it like anything you’d recommend there yeah there’s a guy um uh i’ve forgotten his first name now he’s got three brothers so always get confused with one switch but um so he uh really good long distance smart he held the english channel world record it was um not cody simpson yeah one of the simpson brothers anyway um so he uh i remember looking at some of the sets that that he was doing and pretty much like every every distant set that i saw that he would do and he would prescribe for other people they always finish with something like 8 50s of 50 fast 50 recovery so it always put some speed stuff at the end of each session and like i i’ve started

to incorporate that for a lot of the sessions that i’m writing for our squad here in australia and i think i think that stuff is really good it’s like when you’re tired when you’re fatigued after 3k 4k if you can just get your get your sprint on if you can just pick up that pace that’s going to train you to be able to to do it when you need to as well as i think including some you know some efforts in the middle of of a main set and then just trying to go back to your aerobic or maybe threshold pace like that that stuff is really good the the variable pace stuff goes a long way there’s a set that i really like that i think can be good for those surges one that we would often do is 50 at like 90 effort 5 seconds rest on the wall into 150 at around sort of 75 effort and we do that it depends like six to eight times but i really like that one because it’s like you you go hard really short rest on the wall then you’ve got to try and

settle into that 75 effort pace and just calm the heart rate down at that pace you could probably sustain for your for your swim run event um so a few sets like that i think go a really long way and for people who are newer to swimming newer to the sport they feel like they’ve got one gear they can’t get out of it and this is like i don’t i just i no matter what i do i’ve just got that one pace but i think and the mistake i made when i was growing up is i think i was in the gray zone too much like i just the harder i train the better off i’d be but that neglects the fact of those different training zones so it’s like make sure your aerobic stuff is aerobic make sure your fast stuff is fast so just allowing that that change in speed um to yeah to happen in training yeah i love love the gear gear like having the gears uh when you’re swimming because we were swimming with someone who’s doing the world champion she’s like i just have one speed i

just go the speed all the time i’m like you kind of really the gears are very helpful to have because you are going to need to get out of uh or you know power through like a situation where it’s going to cause you to to go over over a little bit uh outside of whatever your zone to or whatever pacing you’re doing and it is really helpful to have those gears i i love the like eight by fifty or eight by twenty five or whatever and i think something for me that really helped is like hey this isn’t eight by twenty five at like my fast twenty five it’s just eight as hard as you can go twenty five like just get the tank empty for these it’s not who cares about the pace it’s more about the the effort against the twenty against the the distance not what the number is on the on the distance that you have it’s like you got the big fatigue you’re you’re you’re surging you’re you’re getting you’re getting some some big efforts in

there uh that was a really helpful like reframing for me uh it’s like it’s like it’s like a fart lick in a in a run workout where you’re just like just pick it up for 30 seconds like you know what like what have you got you know yeah yeah it goes goes a long way and it Trent Grimsey sorry that was uh that was his name got it nice you got it that’s the important part nice nice um so so so i guess you know one one you know to to start kind of wrapping wrapping this up a little bit Breton i’m curious like you know let’s say someone’s new to swim run and they’re kind of daunted by open water maybe they’ve signed for their first race maybe they have it like you know what what are what are your sort of words of wisdom for someone maybe they’re just like literally brand new to open water like what will you tell them in terms of just got their confidence up to go out there and do it like me you know just curious what you’re like for just camp you did last weekend

like how did you coach people up i’m just like getting into it

yeah so there was actually there was actually one swimmer there who said like every time i race open water after about 200 meters i just might heart rate with skyrocket and i’d panic and then i would just struggle my way way home and she wasn’t like she wasn’t a bad swimmer by by any means but uh she just kind of had that had that uh when she went open water that’s just what happened so and by the end of the week like she did all the swims she she came out of it like so much more confident about about her ability to swim and i think there’s a number of things that played a part of it one is we kind of progressively

progressively made it more challenging through the week so the first swim was was very calm you could stand up and you know we just sort of do a lot of stopping and drills and stuff like that the last swim it was going into a very strong current fairly big chop and waves and it was probably our longest swim of the of the week and like at the end of that like she got through it really well she was tired but she’s like i just feel so much more confident with my ability out there so i think it’s like starting small building up another one is just having other people around so like there was nine nine of us in the water um and just having those people there for for support feel like for safety and also just like when you’re around other people who are doing that it seems like it’s no big big deal and then i think that like the practice component of it so if you were to do say a hundred open water swims is it fair to say that you would get good

at at open water swimming or get fairly competent at it like more than likely yes so just um just taking that first step starting small playing it as safe as you as you want and then just progressively pushing it from there because uh we had a had a lady come to our Maldives camp last year and she would swim a hundred meters and i had to stand up because she was just out of breath quite panicked in the water and i thought well we’ve got a a task ahead ahead of ourselves here like the requirement was to be able to swim 2k um but 100 meters it was but we just sort of worked with her really gradually we’re in the lagoon where we could stand up just talk her through some of the basics um then kind of got up to about 200 meters and 300 meters and by day six she swam around the island which is nearly it’s probably 1.5 miles or a little bit less and but it’s just that progressive you know progressive build up and and having some support

there so it’s like it’s possible for everyone and i think it’s it can be very scary initially because it can seem like there’s just so much out of your control and it’s dark it might seem scary but um just start start small and uh yeah and i think you can really surprise yourself with how far you can get with your with your swimming that way yeah you know i actually think you said some of those those pretty profound there it’s like yeah if you do a hundred open water swims you know it’s it’s like it’s like it’ll kind of take care of itself like you don’t you don’t need to like oh i gotta do all this stuff just go out into the element if you can’t if you have you know and just keep doing that and then eventually it’s like you just have enough reps so it’s like what’s to fear when you’ve done it a hundred times in practice type of thing it’s really really well stated there’s um there’s a group near where i live uh down at the beach here

and uh they i think they call themselves the the teabaggers it’s like you you just sit in the water and just like they would just sit in the water um like it was a bunch of uh getting a soak yeah yeah just getting a soak and and having a chat and then like eventually they kind of some of them just kind of got bored of just chatting they’re like well we really should be swimming here and i think about you know two years later since they first started there’s some of them that are like traveling around the state and going into state as well to do these one kilometer two kilometer swims and like they’ve just progressively built it up and i think if they were to look back two years and go like i that they’re actually traveling to go in these swims i think they’d say there’s no way but that’s happening but um yeah and i can i think some of them will probably push and do some yeah five k’s and 10 k’s in the next couple of years because it

you know what it’s like it gets addictive oh yeah for sure please tell me that one of the members of the teabaggers was named earl earl gray yeah but that’s sorry they’re all women so uh maybe not jasmine was one name jasmine yeah there you go yeah white peach i don’t know i don’t know

that’s i don’t have any more tea references so i’m i’m gonna i’m gonna bow out of the rest of it yeah coffee it might be a different story yeah coffee i can i’m i’m there with you but the i love like sort of this unintentional theme that we ran into you know talking about how to how to do siding properly and how to do that it’s really and i think swimming it’s uh it is easy to kind of get overwhelmed i’m like oh man i might at least my intro needs to be like this and catch and everything break it down into small pieces work on that and then kind of layer up and and stack it whether it’s siding for open water or even just really acclimating and getting used to open water and really expanding your your distance or working with the tether like you don’t have to go swim a mile right out with your partner on you can do a 50 in the in the thing and then see how it goes but yeah kind of start small and then stack it stack it on each other

yeah absolutely and it’s the uh i think it’s like just that uh that consistency over time and just progressively building it up it’s like i think it’s the secret to success in so many so many so many things yeah for sure for sure it really is i mean and speaking of consistency so effortless swimming i mean how many swimmers have you guys had gone through your program at this point like so many yeah well like face to face in our clinics i think it’s it’s probably up to seven thousand plus i think like face to face here in australia um which is like and i’ve yeah so i’ve probably run about half of half of those maybe a bit more um but yeah like thousands and thousands of different swimmers that i’ve i’ve worked with and wow it’s uh yeah and like it kind of gets that point where when i look at someone swimming it feels like it’s really clear on what they need to do and the steps that they need to take but those first you know first couple of years and first

hundred it’s like it really had to kind of uh it was a lot of effort to to do it and so um yeah just like anything as time passes um you kind of look back and go oh crap actually i can’t believe i started there with it because i remember when i started coaching i just thought god how i just find it really hard to pick out what people actually need to change and like the order that or what’s causing what it made no sense to me and i was watching so many videos from other coaches on youtube and dvds back in the day like just trying to figure out freestyle technique and eventually eventually it started to make sense but i remember thinking god it just it’s so complicated but um yeah with it with enough practice i feel like it’s a lot easier now you’d right well yeah i mean it’s like it was like it was super complicated but you’ve actually made it so accessible for so many people so you’ve taken that complexity it actually worked it out to explain

it to people in a way that’s like this is super helpful for so many people not just in person but also all the online programming and stuff so so yeah like you know mad respect from from the low tide boys and as ever thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge with our listeners and viewers but yeah man really appreciate you brenton oh thanks for the invite it’s great to chat with you guys and it’s it’s always a lot of fun so i appreciate the invite yeah absolutely and if you’re looking to improve your swim effortless swimming dot com is a great resource there’s lots of five-day catch clinics to do online also i’ve consumed many many hours of brenton’s youtube channel it does these great breakdowns as well uh and it’s always uh me finding new new things to work on in the pool so be sure to subscribe to those uh we already know you’re subscribed to the low tide boys so go go subscribe to effortless swimming as well

awesome thank you guys see you 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