But I say this to athletes all the time, each and everything we do in life is done better from a state of relaxation. So there’s a certain amount of relaxation and tension that goes on simultaneous. 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 to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My guest today is Frank Sol who’s a fellow coach out of Arizona in the state. Frank, thanks for joining me on the podcast. Oh, Brent, real good be here, my friend. Good to be with you. So I think you sent me a copy of your book, The Five Bees to a Successful Triathlon Swim. And reading through it, there’s so many similarities about how we coach. So I want to get into that today on the podcast because I think there’ll be some good discussion there. And perhaps just see how you approach coaching because I love to learn from other coaches.

And take what I think I could work in my own coaching because I look back at my coaching career over the last 13, 14 years. And it’s just a mishmash of all these different coaches I’ve heard from. Some stuff I’ve come up with on myself, but it’s just you gather all this knowledge. So where did it all start for you? How long ago did you start coaching? Oh, that’s a great question. It’s been 20, 23 years. I was a young swimmer, never a great swimmer. But went back to my local YMCA and started to volunteer. And I was helping, believe it or not, I was helping with mommy and me classes, teaching aqua fit classes, the typical YMCA minnow and guppy and shark classes. One day I was teaching a bunch of young kids how to swim and the head coach for the Red Bank YMCA from New Jersey came up to me and said, hey, look, when I get back from Nationals, I’d like to talk to you about coming on as a coach for my team.

And that was it. I just was hooked at that point. And literally like you started, I started to absorb as much information from every coach, every book, every website I could possibly get. And I think the biggest compliment is what you said. You take this mishmash of different philosophies from different coaches and you make them your own. You’re not reinventing the wheel.

I always like to say 15 by 100 is on a 20 second break is not proprietary coaching, right? I mean, we all, you get what I’m saying there. So I coached for them. I’ve coached high school programs on the New Jersey Shore where I grew up on the Jersey Shore. We had club teams every summer. I coached a club team. So I’ve been around it for a long, long time and then active in swimming and triathlon for easily that many years too.

Yeah, fantastic. And over the last, I’m not sure how many years it’s been for you, but it seems as though primarily now working with masters and a lot of triathletes. That’s like your brain butter these days. Is that correct? That’s correct. I do occasionally get young swimmers, parents will come to me if they’re on a swim program. They want me to do a video stroke analysis very much like you do. They’ll send me some video and ask me to critique their stroke. Then I ask critical questions are, you know, if they’re younger, you know, there’s no difference between sprinters and distance. These young kids are swimming. But as they’re getting older, is the swimmer looking to specialize as a distinast lead or a sprinter? And I do whatever I can to assist them and to help the swimmer fine tune. But my brain and butter comes working with triathletes

and master swimmers looking to improve in their swim stroke. Yes. And that’s how I started was coaching a master’s team for sort of nine years. I think it was and loved it and loved working with adults. A lot who did swim as kids and were very good as juniors. And then have continued on as master swimmers and done well at master’s comps. But then obviously also those that have learned to swim as an adult. And so I think for your approach with someone who didn’t learn to swim as a kid, they might have had a couple of lessons here and there, but primarily coming to it after 30, maybe after 40. What’s your approach there in giving them the skills that they need to be able to learn to me? And what do you sort of preface it with? Like, how do you let them know how long it’s going to be until they start to see results and all those sorts of things? Because it’s quite different, isn’t it? So working with someone who didn’t learn to swim as a kid.

Yeah, there’s virtually it’s like night and day. And I agree with you. So what I will normally do is I’ll get in the athlete in the water and I will ask them just meet me for 15, 20 minutes. Now, I know that’s taking time, but I do that for a reason to see what their commitment to level is to the process. I get them in the water. I watch them swim. And you know, within a few strokes, you can tell what’s going on. I always try to point out something positive immediately. You know, I’m an ex teacher. So we try to sandwich that kind of bad news in between something positive and, you know, finishing it up with something positive. But the reality is I make it very, very clear that they come from, if they come from a non swimming background, they’re going to have virtually no kinesthetic feel for the water. Their breathing is going to be horrible. They’re going to want to muscle themselves through the water. And I take this approach to tell athletes going,

listen, I realize you may have a triathlon to do in three to four months, but to get really good at this, you’re going to need to be at this for a couple of years. And you got to be, I tell them to brace the three P’s, be patient, be persistent and practice perfectly. What I mean by that, Brent, is practice it as perfectly as you can on that given day. If I can get that commitment from an athlete,

this almost sounds arrogant and bold, but I can assure you we’re going to get that athlete to be a good swimmer. We’re not, we’re not qualifying for, for Kona world championships or getting out of the water in their age group in fifth place. But the fact of the matter is they will start to become a swimmer. And I tell athletes, you got to think like a swimmer, act like a swimmer, project yourself as a swimmer. Because there’s this, this bind body, I get very deep into the mind body relationship. Because you, as you know, working with non-swimming adults, they get into the water and you can get frustrated, very easy, very, very easy. So I asked them to be patient with it, embrace the process, live through the process, take the time that it deserves to develop. And you’re going to start to see the results. So I start to work immediately as you, you made reference to my book on their breathing. I find that there was, let me back up, just this weekend,

there was a major triathlon here in the Flagstaff area, Mount Man, which they, it’s claimed the hardest triathlon, this part of the, of the United States. And it is, it’s at elevation, seven plus thousand feet. So guess what? Your breathing is going to be off. So I work with a lot of athletes on breath work. I also have a certification as a breath coach. So it’s absolutely critical that they work their breath just as well as they do their swimming and create a feel and a breathing rhythm to the stroke. When you can do that, I think we’re on our road to having a successful swim. And I think when, when people turn up to the pool, you can, for me, like I used to, as a coach on deck, I’d sort of watch people arrive at the pool and you can tell those swimmers that have been doing it for a long time and they’re confident and they’re comfortable, even just the way they walk into the pool. It’s very different. And then those swimmers that are perhaps learning,

they’re a bit newer, they walk in differently. So I think it all starts with that, that mindset and that approach as you go into it. And look, you’re not going to walk in there with the confidence of Michael Phelps when you’re new to it. But just, I think that mindset’s really important. And that mindset can then help you relax. Because if you’re not relaxed, you’re not going to move well. And so it’s, it’s such a critical thing. And I think that being that ability to relax starts with, with how you’re breathing, doesn’t it? Because when people are a little bit afraid of the water, they start to breathe shallow and breathe a bit faster. And so if you can just start with the more relaxed, the longer breaths, using your diaphragm a bit more, it’s, everything can follow on from, from there. So what, what sort of breathing exercises or what sort of stuff you have them do to help with that breathing, to kick them off?

And a great, great question. And I’ll follow up with the point that you made about being relaxed in my book. And there’s a, I forget the author’s name who said this, but I say this to athletes all the time. Each and everything we do in life is done better from a state of relaxation. So there’s a certain amount of relaxation and tension that goes on simultaneous, even sitting there watching the Olympics and watching the great swimmers that came out of Australia this year competing at the Olympics, you know, right alongside the United States. The reality is they look like they’re, they’re just muscling themselves through the water. But you and I know better. There’s a state of relaxation engaging the muscles that need to be engaged and oxidizing those muscles accordingly. One of the very first things I do is I’ll have an athlete stand there in front of me and I’ll have them stand there with their hands at their side.

And if they’re struggling to breathe and they’ll tell me that, hey, listen, you have to 50 yards, I can’t even breathe. I got to hold on the wall and I’m just struggling. I’ll have them and stand there and I ask them to take a nice breath in through their nose, preferably through their nose. And immediately I get to see if they are a, what is referred to as a vertical breather or a horizontal breather. Vertical breathers are breathers who breathe through their mouth or their nose and their lungs, their chest fills up and their shoulders and neck get all tight versus breathing horizontally. That means breathing out through the lower diaphragm, right, because we have this two diaphragm peer system, breathing through the lower lobes of our lungs. And I teach them to put their hands on their lower two ribs and start to exercise those ribs in and out. So we’re breathing literally, and if you can see this, it’s they’re breathing out through the side.

Now I was fortunate enough to have a coach years ago and every Wednesday night we would go out to the Jersey Shore and swim and he would have a stand there with our hands on our wetsuit and he would have us breathe out under our armpits, expanding our side of our bodies, explaining that all this fascia and ribs and everything that protect the lungs. Then we wrap it in a wetsuit in neoprene becomes very, very challenging to breathe that way. So to be able to teach athletes to expand. So what I will have an athlete do, and this is an answer directly to your question, is breath work outside of the pool? It’s a kind of oxygen advantage, Wim Hof type of exercise where they’ll lay down very rapid breathing only through the nose, in and out through the nose, exhale in, exhale out, and on the 20th exhale, they hold the exhale for as long as they can. So it is what is referred to as a, you’re creating a hypercapinic condition

where you’re elevating carbon dioxide, lowering oxygen, teaching the body how to work in that in that position and in that condition. And it is the best way to train that elevation without going to elevation. And I’ve had nothing but tremendous feedback from athletes who will take the time. Now, full disclosure, I’m just being honest with you, I probably show this to 20 athletes, maybe, maybe one or two will actually follow through and do it.

And it’s just, it’s mindset too, Brenton, like you went before, is how we think outside of the water and the ancillary things we need to do to get better at swimming. So those are the things that I do. First of all, I see if there are a vertical breather or a horizontal, I want them breathing horizontally, not vertically.

And then I give them breathing drills outside of the water. I have a t-shirt on the back of it. I coined this years ago. I say this all the time to athletes. It is always about the swim, but not always about the water. Me, and you know what I mean, I hope you know what I mean by that is that it’s the things that we do outside of the water that prepare us for a successful swim. I loved your last podcast about the mobility. I couldn’t agree with, I was with you 100% on that whole discussion about a more mobile body. Breathing helps in that respect. Supports the spine, hips, rotation, all of that. Everything starts with proper breathing. So I hope I answered that question for you. Yeah, that’s great. I remember going to a, it’s like a breath control course. It was kind of basically like myself or you would run for swimming, but it was for breathing to do with surfing bigger waves. Run by a guy called Nan Baldwin over here

who’s, he worked with a couple of the Australian Olympians, this past Olympics, and he’s worked with surfers like McFanning and Steph Gilmore. And I remember when he was demonstrating some of these

ways to breathe and how he wanted to breathe, he did that same thing, just trying to get the ribs to expand outwards this way and come back in that way. So I think breathing is so important. And then it all, it kind of goes hand in hand, almost to posture after that, doesn’t it? Where with the right posture, you can breathe so much more effectively. And again, it’s like these two things which most people and understand, they wouldn’t give too much thought about when it comes to swimming. It’s like, you get in there, move your arms, move your legs, it’s going to move you forwards. But with the right breathing and the right posture, that sets you up and gives you that foundation to then build upon. Because when you see someone who’s got poor posture in the water, sometimes their head’s really dug down deep and their shoulders are rounded, you are not strong, you’re not going to be able to breathe well in that position.

So are there any cues or how do you teach the right posture for people?

And that’s a great point. We know that the relationship between posture and breathing are critical. All the great minds who are coming out with a lot of information now, the white papers are out there, that if you are breathing correctly,

they’ll say to you, before you correct your posture, correct your breathing first. So that is something, and I’m going to be honest with you, there was a course that you ran years ago, five, six, seven years ago, in assessing postures. I took that and you should be so happy, your ears should be burning because there isn’t a day of the week that I don’t go by and use some of that posture adjustment and assessment when I’m working with my athletes.

I’m a real big fan of Greg Cook and I’m sure you may know him as one who came up with the functional movement screening. So I’ll take them through that and then I will go through some, whatever I need. Hey, listen, if it’s outside my realm of specialty, I will send them to a PT, to a physical therapist, as we call them here in the States,

and work with a physical therapist to make the corrections because like you said, once I get an athlete in the water and I’m watching them go through their stroke and I’m watching their arms recover out of the water, I could basically, without even doing an assessment on the athlete, you can almost tell that they’re back that are scapular, the thoracic region, it’s locked up like a bank on Sunday and they’re never going to proceed

as a better swimmer if they don’t get the mobility. So to answer your question directly, I will do an assessment on an individual if it’s out of my range of specialty. I will suggest they go see someone who really is an expert in stretching and mobility, a physical therapist, but I will give them some very, very basic stretches to start to open up through the pec major and pec minor, open up their shoulders a bit, open up through the ribs.

I’m a big fan, I talk about it in my book. I am one of those coaches who believes that every swimmer should be doing yoga. That’s just me, whether you actually go to a studio or spend 10 to 15 minutes in your own studio home, living room, bedroom, going through a range of motions would only serve the swimmer, pure swimmer and or triathlete or an open water endurance swimmer so much better in that perspective because the incredible nature of our bodies to work with in sync with the breath, the mind, the body are chemicals that are changed when there’s stress and inflammation in our bodies will all create problems in that realm. So that’s a great, great question. I evaluate that. I will direct the athlete the best way that I know how to get them to be able to become more functionally mobile in the water. Yeah, I think it’s and a little bit goes a long way with mobility and yoga because there’s people that can be so busy with

if they’re training for triathlon and they’re working, they might have family as well. They can be so busy and the last thing they want to do is go, all right, so I’m doing three sports now I need to add in yoga as well but five to 10 minutes a couple of times a week I think can be that’s better than nothing and for me, and I spoke about this on the podcast with Jeff Grace who runs swim specific yoga he was like before training in the mornings provided I wake up with enough time I’ll just do a couple of yoga moves five minutes before I leave and those sessions I’m so much better off for it because it just loosens up the hips and your back and your shoulders and I noticed a big difference there and it’s particularly through well through the shoulders obviously but I think through the hips as well you know I’ve worked with quite a few people recently where when we’re looking at their kick that you got your torso here and their legs

their quads are down there because they just don’t have that range through their hip flexors and it creates so much drag and just if they could get that up it is free speed it’s no extra effort and it’s just really going to take the breaks off for you so there’s all these little things like that where we see that you can have better a better position in the water and it’s just going to be so much easier and you think of what it can take to say drop five or 10 seconds per 100 with the amount of extra training it might require but you’ve got all these little opportunities like better range of motion to be able to to do that and it doesn’t take any extra training to be able to do it so I think with a lot of summers you know you’ve got that opportunity to to find those little things that they may not have even thought about before

and it goes back to what we were I was saying before it’s always about the swim but it’s not always about the water so again stealing a line from Greg Cook one time I remember him saying at one of the certifications I heard him say

more isn’t better better is better so I get it coach right you out of work out you need to bang out 2,500 meters

what if we spent 10 minutes on the deck prior and I give a lot of my athletes this wonderful shoulder mobility routine to do and I tell them if it took you five minutes to do before you got in the water it took you one minute too many you should be able to get this done in about four minutes and what it does it starts to open up the shoulders open up the wrists and the forearms and four minutes could make a substantial difference in the way you feel in the water and going back to feeling the water better awareness kinesthetically feeling what the body’s going through and you said it so appropriately if I can keep the body and I’m paraphrasing what you said if I can keep the body more hydrodynamic and keep the border paying attention to fluid dynamics free speed man and go holy crap the wall just caught up on me why? because you’re moving more efficiently through the water so I ask athletes to become more mindful of that

my first chapter in the book is all about belief and it’s probably the longest chapter because it’s about being more mindful

one of the I have to share this story with you because I think you’d appreciate it one of your capadres from Australia Mr. Paul Nukum I had the privilege of being coached under him a few years ago out here in the States and we all stood on deck one day every coach and every triathlete we had our big bulky garments on and he kind of looked at us and said so something like how many of you blokes have a garment on and what are all the pride in the world we’ve got our garments on we’re triathletes and we’re coaches he said take those bloody things off and learn how to swim from feel so I will write specific workouts for my athletes send them over to the pool do a warm-up and then I want you to do 2100s on a 20 second break strictly by feel

trust your breath trust your feel how does the body move through the water and then just give me the final time and then we can make some rough estimates but you know as well as I do open water swim unless you’re stopping for feeding Ironman half-hour you can’t look at your watch you have no you have no clue unless you’re trusting how you’re feeling in the water trusting your breath listening to the rhythm the connection between breath and movement breath and movement movement and breath they all have to work in sync so I will ask athletes from time to time take that bloody garment off I’m not only throwing garment on there you know a Timex or any other brand you swim with Apple and and just swim for the sake of swimming I have a tendency to I write blogs all the time I wrote a blog on that it’s probably one of the most comments I got positive and questioning like how am I supposed to know how fast I’m swimming that’s the idea

we don’t want you necessarily to see this we want you to feel this so I do coach feel a lot I was told as a young coach one time by a ruffled coach he told me you can’t teach feel either they’re born with it or they’re not and I’m going based on that I’ve made it my life’s mission to teach feel in the water I just believe that that was erroneous information and it was just an old guy sharing his thoughts at a big meet at a at a at a summer meet and I’ve made it my life to teach people how’d that feel oh you felt it on your forearms great do it again how’d that feel that didn’t feel good change it up what do we need what didn’t feel good oh so

I try to get them to self-coach themselves and answer their own question before I supply information and I believe that in my mind that’s that’s the sign of a of a coach because that’s how I was coached and I try to bring that along is because on race day that’s all they have is themselves out there right and hopefully you’re in their ear talking to him going no Brendan told me to do this he told me to do this so I got to do this so again I hope that answered that question directly but that’s that’s that’s how I approach this I love it I’ve had a similar thing I can’t remember who it was from but it’s basically like yeah you can’t you can’t teach feel and this and that and I was just thinking like well that’s that’s kind of the easy way out it’s like and and that’s kind of the approach that I’ve

of coaches that I’ve seen that I want to steer away from you know there’s lots of great coaches out there that I look up to and I learn from but there’s also some coaches that I’ve seen where I go I don’t I don’t want to have that approach because as an athlete if the coach is saying like you’re never gonna you’re never gonna have feel for water you’ve either got it or you don’t it’s like we’ll give up already you know that’s that’s it so um that and it’s like it’s just simply not not true because when I’ve run clinics in the past often after some of the progressions that we’ve we’ve done people have gone oh this is great I can feel what I’m what I’m trying to get in the catch and I can feel it on my forearms my hands and it’s like I’m moving through the water better and it’s like it’s it’s possible so I just yeah that that really annoys me that

that whole thing where people are saying you’ve either got it or you don’t it’s yeah it’s it’s the easy way out I think as a coach I I I agree with you and and I I’ve never run from a challenge and and I like that about coaching is just taking taking what has been

for a better term gospel over the years and adjusting and tweaking it we were we’ve seen it we’re we’re seeing it at this Olympics we’ve seen all these little nuances and you know Rowdy Grains was I love the fact that he at one point was

congratulating the amount of club coaches and their input to what we were seeing at the Olympics this year and I’ve never heard that before it’s always you know coach so-and-so from the Olympics it’s coach Cohen so from the Olympics but you you and I both know that all started early early early on with some really good fundamentals and tweaking this and tweaking that going God have that feel man let’s why don’t we just let’s let’s point that center finger down a little bit just drive that shoulder up and take that hand out a little bit more to the yeah let’s do that and see how that feels works great doesn’t work let’s go back to the drawing board so when you can take that approach and again I go back to triathlon and I get the idea that somebody signed up for an Ironman I get the idea that they signed up a year ago and it’s a year out from Ironman Arizona I’ll use for example and then they come to see a coach like me six months out from Ironman

and then I just have to ask them point blank on where the heck you been where you been

we missed the most incredibly important months of developing technique and feel for the water we need to start building your endurance and now I’ve got to get you technically sound and build endurance at the same time

the ones who see it and the ones who get it Brenton it’s absolutely amazing I if you don’t mind I’ll just share a quick story with you I worked with a gentleman his name is Justin Ironman Arizona two years ago before the virus hit and he got out of the water in a one hour 18 minutes now you and I both know it’s a very respectful time for an Ironman of one hour and 18 but he came to me and I wasn’t even his coach but he found me he came to me and said I really I really want to crush this swim I want to qualify for Kona this year he went to court of lane got out of the water in a 105 and guess what that time difference he sent him to Kona because he had a solid bike and a solid run already he knew that five that 12, 14, 15 minutes that gap there was the deciding factor but here’s what happened I told him what he needed to do he did it he did it religiously he did it fundamentally how I asked there was great communication between me and the athlete

always doing more underwater video and I know you do the same as I do giving him feedback sending him to him going okay we’re right on target here but we need to adjust this let’s try this drill let’s do this, this and this and he got it done and I truly believe maybe I’m naive that if anybody who goes from a 118 to a 105 and under

this Justin did it anybody can do it I just believe that again there are coaches telling me I’m a little naive in that respect but I do believe if you’re patient enough persistent enough and willing to do what’s necessary it could be done and done successfully and that is just me being around the sport for all these years and seeing we get in the water we get in the water we get in the water we swim, we swim, we swim, we swim and I said to one athlete one time I said my friend you are really getting very very good at doing it very very bad because from a habitual standpoint his neural muscular memory and his neurons are just firing in the same way and when I try to show him something he just reverts back to the other way because this

is just wanting to swim versus taking the time to do it the proper way and becoming really good at it so more isn’t better I just try to tell athletes from time to time I’d rather see an athlete get in the water and bang out you give me 1600 ideal yards versus 24 so-so yards I’ll take that 1600 pure yards or meters any day of the week my friend

yeah that’s great when you get a result like that and the belief that someone would get from that result as well to see you know 30 minutes is massive you try and take that off on maybe the run or the bike it’s like wow that’s um and you know in comparatively too as a percentage of the overall you know swim time that is huge and one thing that I believe is really important for people to understand as well we had some Amy who came to one of our clinics earlier this year and she did did an Ironman I think there’s maybe three four months after it and she she took off let’s escape me now but quite a quite a significant chunk of her swim time from her previous Ironman and she had to persist for it was a good six weeks or seven weeks where she wasn’t getting faster she wasn’t feeling like things were like improving but then all of a sudden it clicked and it came together but she she trusted

coaching enough she trusted herself to put up with it and and to persist with these changes in her stroke even though she wasn’t seeing the results yet and then it it happened and I think it’s that it’s so easy to just give up after two or three weeks and go now this isn’t working and just go back to normal but if you can just persist as you’re saying and and be consistent with it that you can really get it get a huge amount from it and that consistency and seeing the water to his his huge we were talking earlier about the lockdowns here in Australia and Melbourne I hadn’t been able to coach for I don’t know five weeks now and so I hadn’t been able to swim much because our pools were closed and so all I was doing was just surfing every day and my like I’m a I learned when I was 18 or 19 and the last like month that I’ve had surfing every day sometimes twice a day my surfings improved dramatically and it’s just that consistency and coaching as well

like just getting a few you know tips here and there and so I took that and and thought well this is like okay this is kind of exactly what what we need to do with it this one is is make sure they’re in the water enough and they’ve got just a couple of points to work on and and then they’re going to see those results

critical I I think you just hit the nail on the head also when I send an athlete to the pool I want them focusing on one potentially two things because psychologists will tell you multitasking is something that’s been sold to modern society but we’re really not good at because I don’t want them thinking about their kick thinking about their catch thinking about hand entry hip rotation pick one thing two things and focus on that because you know as well as I do with if if if something is a on a major let’s say hip rotation if they’re swimming flat you fix that all these other little details simply fall under this big tip detail and all of a sudden like Amy and you get to know their personality I don’t know who Amy is but I can probably if you and I had more time I would tell you some of her personality traits and Brenton I think you’d tell me right on right on right on very patient buying into the process gift can easily get frustrated

I got a gal here back in the States her name is Teresa crushing it crushing it crushing it for about five six weeks frustration frustration frustration left arm dropping pressing down shoulder pains and I just you know in my younger coaching days I would have said oh my god what am I doing wrong what do I need to do here and I said you know let’s get that let’s take two days off give the shoulder some time to heal I sent her to the pool swam one day without her watch then we started to go through some some systematic drills found what worked she’s right back to where she was and swimming better now than she was prior to what I like we I refer to as her her meltdown but like you said

trust the process trust the coaching know that these are simple laws of physics if I abide by these laws of physics I have to swim well being hydrodynamic adding the right amount of pressure not trying to beat the water up not trying to muscle the water and all of a sudden it starts to come together the biggest challenge I have sometimes is getting the athlete to buy into that process because you and I both we probably have said this athletes all the time come on dude embrace the process man embrace the process it’s going to come together but you’ve got to be patient with it so I plead with athletes and I will say this with with all the confidence of 23 years of coaching if you do what we’re talking about here any of athletes who are listening to this you have to become a better swimmer again like I said you’re not we’re not talking about podium finish but if you’re a typical two minutes and 15 second out of the you know per hundred

you have a chance to drop that hundred time under two minutes substantially like that if you abide to these simple laws of physics and that’s what I tell athletes that’s what I write about and that’s how I

create my whole philosophy around my coaching and when I work with athletes some of them some athletes buy into it some are looking for quick fix or one athlete says well don’t you have a little hack for me no no yeah I do have a hack for you it’s called freaking hard work that’s the hack for you other than that I don’t have a hack for you so it’s something that when you get the right athlete in the agreeing to that particular philosophy boy it’s it’s magic you know what I’m saying yeah it’s it’s great to work with those people that that are willing to to to follow that it’s it’s a really enjoyable process to go through with them and I I was going through it was creating this last week so in our membership we’ve just I’ve just finished the eight week faster freestyle course so we’ve got our five core principles which are somewhat similar to your five five B’s and those those five core principles I’ve put together an eight week course

just to have some structure around developing those things in the stroke and the last one that I put together last week was the was stroke rate which was was weak eight and one of the things that if you’re more of the engineering type mindset or mathematical mindset the one of the ways that you can figure out what you need to do to swim a certain pace is just look at this the speed equation you got like distance per stroke you like stroke count and just stroke rate and by sort of adjusting those couple of things you can see what the resulting time would be if you increase your rating or increase your distance per stroke and you can sort of figure it out that way and so it’s and that’s what you’re saying in terms of it’s all just it’s all physics you know it’s all just there is the science behind it and you can think about it that way and I think when we’re coaching most people aren’t probably looking at it that way we need to be a little bit more

perhaps they need certain cues or they need analogies to help them with understanding these things and taking it on board but you have got that side of it where you can look at it from the pure speed equation and you can show someone all right you’re swimming 50 seconds a lap it’s taking you 40 strokes to take this lap and your rating’s at 65 strokes a minute so you know we can show them what what they can do there to to do it because I think there’s probably a lot of people out there who’ve never considered that part of it as well like all right I’m pushing off on the wall I swim 50 meters but how does that that make up and so the way that you can adjust it is all right to increase your distance per stroke or reduce your stroke count it’s that’s the technique that’s reducing drag increasing propulsion then you got your stroke rate and being able to perhaps hold a faster stroke rate without sacrificing too much distance per stroke and that’s really the

the art of it and that’s finding that sweet spot which certainly can take some time but for those that do are more inclined to think about it that way that’s a really fun thing to sort of look at and and show the opportunity that’s available to you to find some extra speed yeah agreed and and I just explained to athletes the simple equation SR times SL equals velocity right stroke rate times stroke length

the one thing a one little thing that I do is when when I’m evaluating a swimmer whether it be through video stroke analysis and or on deck is I’ll look at their and I usually use the right arm their point of entry and point of exit off the lane line which will tell me in many respects how well they’re grabbing and holding water and driving their body through the water if their point of entry and point of exit’s really narrow that means that their stroke rate’s going to be higher and if they do not have the aerobic engine for that they’re going to get exhausted but on the other side of that coin you and I both know there’s tons of articles about talking about gliding as this this evil

you know like a gift from the devil himself and swimming that if you’re over gliding it’s horrible but if we noted during the Olympics was the first time ever noticed right behind each swimmer when Ledecky was swimming and and she’s right there with that young lady from Australia they were strong they were showing stroke length right per stroke right 1.46 meters so all of those things like you said so elegantly really become critical so when you could take the science and the feel

and create that gut intuition in between all this man you got yourself one hell of a swimmer because then they could take that science and say okay the science can’t lie if the science won’t lie here physics won’t lie this is what it feels like this is what I need to do to improve so there’s all kinds of little tricks and I agree with you and I’m a big fan of the tempo trainer I will use that with some more

refined athletes I won’t give that to a newer athlete because they will just take that to the umpteenth degree and try to you know well what do you mean I’m only 48 strokes per minute I want to be 55 strokes per minute I’m going oh easy there cowboy it ain’t happening like that but my refined swimmers know that if they’re at 70 strokes per minute and I want to bump them up to 71 to 72 just let’s let’s just be real real cautious about this and move this along

very very smartly and it will come together so again that always goes back to that patience I always go remember the three Ps yeah I they’ll look at me yeah coach I get it pace and we’re not a patient society anymore we want we want it like we want things like that you know I want to get out of the water in an hour flat I get it I get it well not at a 215 pace it’s not going to happen but trust the process so Brent and that’s what I tell athletes be patient trust the process yeah it’s uh talk about not being patient I got in yesterday morning for my first session back after I don’t know if it was two or three weeks because we can swim here in regional Victoria and I just I just wanted to get in and get back to my usual paces and times and that wasn’t happening it was oh man it’s frustrating but I just wanted to get straight back into it even though I’ve been out of the water for a for a while so I completely understand the want to just have things happen

that happen quickly but I know in the back of my mind it’s going to be another maybe I don’t know two or three weeks of consistent swimming to get back to at least where I was so yeah it’s just being being able to accept that and then just go about your business and and wait until you’ve gone through that that time period now just with your with your five p’s so here really I’ll read them out for people who are who are listening so number one is belief number two is breathing three is be relaxed four is balance buoyancy and body position and then number five is biomechanics so uh I find it interesting this is kind of a similar approach to what I would often take is you’ve kind of got all these things and the very last one’s biomechanics so yeah there’s so much that goes into it now

what I want to go on to number four which is that the balance and buoyancy and that kind of thing because it’s something that a lot of people struggle with is good body position stopping the legs from sinking what are some of those causes those main causes that will have someone sit low in the water or struggle to feel like they can stay afloat yeah and basically when I when I’m with a new swimmer I have no hesitation in getting into water and demonstrating for him and as I shared with you before we went on I mean I still swim I five six days a week if I can’t get in sick if I get in less than five days I’m a little jittery so before we got on today I got my swim done and went upstairs did my weights and so the reality is that

balance

is such a critical piece if you are not staying long and sleek and hydrodynamic in the water you’re going to swim you know with your with your hips down so what I try to to establish with an athlete is getting them to swim from their center of balance and their center of balance is right at the sternum right below the navel is their center of gravity and I always like to say God is ultimate wisdom made us that way so we don’t keel over every time we take a step or we walk off a curb think about the fact that our glute muscles our hamstrings our quadriceps our calf muscles the largest densest the dense muscles in our body and if you’re an athlete that means your bones are stronger your capillaries and your blood vessels are stronger you have more muscle and you’re going to sink so you’ve got to be able to create this relationship between your center of balance and your center of gravity and I’ll get into water and then demonstrate

I’m simply and full disclosure I robbed this from coaches years ago just kind of leaning into the tea of the chest and slight it brings up the hips now we know in the world of Olympic swimming a lot of triathletes want to get into water and mimic what they do with their kick and you know as well as I do you can’t swim 1.2 miles or 2.4 miles like that and still feel like you’ve got legs for the bike in the run so what I’m trying to tell athletes is we do not want to necessarily depend on our legs or our kick to help us elevate our hips and elevate our body but the kick is substantially helps in that rotation and helps to keep the body up but I get them and I’ll spend a lot of time in the water with them simply doing what I like to call plank drills simply arms out in front superman position leaning into the water looking straight down like they have a tennis ball under their neck and just this very very very relaxed kick then what I’ll do is

move to like four strokes no breath showing them that they can apply strokes and still maintain the integrity of the body Brenton I’m sure if if you would agree with me I got into water today rotation leaning into my armpit pressing the temple down I felt my hips come up I felt like I moved through the water that much quicker it’s something that every swimmer has to constantly make that adjustment on it’s not all of a sudden you just shut the brain down you’ve got to have some sort of internal gyroscope going whoop dropped hips what am I doing wrong make that correction open water becomes even more critical

the year before COVID I think we’re all losing track of time I’m standing on the deck of the ferry boat outside of Alcatraz

overlooking the water right before they blow the horn to jump in the waves and the current that particular day was extraordinary and all bets are off you’re trying to maintain some segment of balance and buoyancy in this in this washing machine but you’ve got to be able to be able to do that in those environments if yours is going to be successful and yes I got out of the water and no one had to help me out and pull me out but the fact of the matter is in a pool I’d like to say we’re in a petri dish we’re in this beautiful refined 25 meter 25 a 50 meter pool swimming we have virtually no waves or no disruption to water so we need to learn those body positions in that environment and take it out into the open water environment so

again I hope that answered the question but I get into the water I demonstrate years ago what we would do is I would take a piece of kickboard if they really were sinkers I would take a kickboard and I cut it up into segments quarter half three quarters full kickboard I’d stick a piece of it right under their under their quadriceps and see if it helped to elevate them I would take a half a piece see if that elevated and then just get them to feel the pressure on their chest this kind of relationship between the sternum and their head what eight nine pounds for most of most adults and use that as ballast to help to get those hips up but what we don’t people say to me well some coach told me to force my hips up

try swimming like that for for for a mile and see how see what kind of energy you’re going to have because of all that oxygen you’re dumping down into those hips establish balance you got it made so I again hope I answered that question the best way it could yeah that’s great I am yeah very similar in I think how that to approach that and one of the things that you mentioned there is when people try and force their hips up the the initial thought for most people when they’re trying to get the hips up is to stick their bum up in the air but that bends them through their hips and through their their waist and then you know we talk about dropping the legs that’s that’s what it causes so sometimes that it requires that little bit of like core bracing the core squeezing the butt cheeks a little bit to straighten that out and then you can press on the T to to help bring that up and so that’s it’s such a nuanced thing that I don’t think is really natural for

people who are who are new to swimming that when they finally get it they go hi okay yeah that that makes sense it’s strange and I don’t have it all the time this is the kind of the feedback I get when people started is that they it’s like I’m having to really think about it a lot and then I notice when I don’t don’t have it but with more and more practice it becomes automatic and I think of when I’m swimming like it’s I’m not actively thinking about it but I know that I’m sort of adjusting how how I’m how much engagement how much tension through the core and through the glutes that I’m applying through different parts of the stroke and so when I tune into that it’s like okay yeah you’ve got to constantly be using it and so I think it’s a it’s a really important thing for people to to understand to be able to help bring those those legs up because I’ve had so many people who have been sticking their bum up in the air

and wondering why they’re still like sinking basically

and and and you bring up some really good points and I agree with you in in regards we don’t want to overthink it but we when when I’m teaching a brand to adult triathlete or swimmer how to do that I will challenge him I said listen for these next three sessions I want you to get out of the water more mentally tired than physically tired because I need you to think about it which leaves me um I’ll I will never forget this interview one of Michael Phelps gold medals he wins the gold medal he gets out and I think it was down in Rio and the interviewer asks Michael so when you’re swimming the the 53 50 meter free what are you thinking about and he said this and this was his answer I think about absolutely nothing

why all of those things were done at those sets hidden in coach Bowman probably said oh no stop stop at the wall let’s discuss this let’s talk about this feel this do this so when race day comes whether you’re swimming 50 meters or you’re swimming um you know a 10k open water swim event or Alcatraz or your local triathlon it has become more reactionary and what I like to say is your internal gyroscope just takes over and you start to make these corrections you just kind of feel you you know what I’m talking about you kind of feel like oh god I just feel awful a little bit oh I’m not but but make this correction make this correction and you get good at that but that comes with experience and time it just doesn’t all of a sudden one two three it’s there so this is why I love dialogue with coaches like yourself because you trade ideas are going I’m going to remember that I’m going to use that I’m going to apply that in my

coaching philosophy because it works so hats off to you for for this opportunity to be able to openly discuss these these coaching methods and and and both of them I know they lead to success because I’ve seen it and I’ve seen it with my own swimming I’m folder disclosure I’m 66 years old I’m swimming better now I mean I’m holding my I’m holding my hundreds on 141 40 141 142 pace in a yard pool okay I’m proud of that it’s it’s it’s good I feel great but guess what I know I still have more work to do I know I can get under that under that 140 I know I can so that’s my goal and that’s what I work for my friend that’s yeah it’s it’s so good is it like a that’s that that’s half the fun is just trying to find improvement and just to continue to to better yourself and going back to your point of like Michael felt sort of thinking about nothing when he’s racing Ariane Titmus when she was asked you know what what did your coach

Dean Box will say to you before the race and she essentially said like we we’ve trained for this for however many years and like he didn’t didn’t give me any advice didn’t tell me what to think but just you know wish me all the best because she’s going in there she’s not she’s not going in there and coming up with a race plan on the spot she knows what she’s got to do she’s trained for it and then it’s just about switching off all the distraction getting in there and just letting the like letting it become automatic and it’s like when someone is in training and they’re working on perhaps some stuff that they’ve been given by their coach it’s kind of like when you’re learning to drive there’s so much going on you got maybe your mum or your dad sitting next to you you think oh my god how this this whole thing’s moving and I’m just moving this doing well and you’re looking out for all these things you might cross over the

white line and go hang on correct it and you’re thinking about it so much but then when you get into your race you want it to be like you’ve driven for for 10 years and it’s just you could do it while on the phone right it’s just you want to be able to make it automatic and so I think that’s a big part of training is yeah you’re certainly thinking about things a lot and then when it comes race time is we want to have everything just happen you’ve trained for it and you can switch off and all you’re really thinking about is perhaps just the fine adjustment of your pace and your effort and just correcting for you know whatever the race strategy that you’ve you’ve got or you know where people are making groups or packs just all those those little things so it’s um yeah I think in training it’s very much about feeling like you learn to drive a car sometimes when you are thinking about lots of things great and you know

there’s something Brenton that I try to convey to athletes and I remember for myself we I’m sure if we sat here with any great swimmer Phelps, Anthorp, any great golfer, any great basketball player Michael Jordan and if we asked them a point in question as successful as they were were there are certain things they can improve at and undoubtedly I would think that each and every one of them would say absolutely so that is what I love about swimming each and every time I get in the water it’s an opportunity for me to improve as an individual now I will tell you there are times I get out of the water and I’m going have I ever really actually swam before my life because this was horrible but I have a saying with athletes there’s no such thing as a bad swim there’s no such thing as did I learn something from it did I get in the water did I knock out my workout you did something that most people didn’t do today so in that perspective when I think

about it there’s no such thing as a bad swim now yes you and I both know there’s things as bad swims right somebody has a bad swim and a big meat or triathlon but the fact of the matter is what did I learn from that going into it

lack of hydration didn’t sleep well the night before poor nutrition shoulders all jacked up because I was doing weights an hour before so generally there’s kind of rhyme and reason that follow a bad swim and then you go and learn through the process to make the adjustment for the next for the next time you get in the water and when an athlete a triathlete swimmer adult swimmer youth swimmer can take that mentality into their workouts I think they’ve got a major step over everyone else because they’re looking at this from the perspective is continual mental physical emotional and I even like to say spiritual growth I always kid people I get in the water I’m in church my friend it is just such a spiritual thing for me to go back and forth and you know I this morning it was nothing more it was a kind of an easy swim I did a thousand 20 second break right into a 500 swim and people will ask me yes I had my garment on and people will ask me

do you count laps absolutely

how do you do that because it was taught to me years ago as a young swimmer you better you better know what lap you’re on because I know what you’re on and you better be in sync with me and we would be deathly afraid going I think I’m at 450 coach am I right yes you are but you get my point is that I make that an opportunity to get in the water and just and let it go with the intentions of improvement

just developing as an individual and that’s what I love about swimming that’s what I still love about triathlon and that’s what I love about open water swimming in general just to be able to get out there and get

get in water which just feels so natural for me and I’m sure it does for a lot of the a lot of your listeners too I think it’s a massive draw card and thing that keeps a lot of the people listening to this podcast that keeps them coming back to to swimming is that that spiritual aspect of it and I’m for me in my sort of day to day life I just I’m more like sort of I feel like I’m much more about sort of concrete things and real things and so when it comes to airy fairy stuff it’s like no that’s not me but then when I’m swimming or when I’m surfing or I’m in the water that’s like I’m all about it so I think I sort of compartmentalize it for anything to do with the water or I’m all airy fairy in that aspect of life because it’s yeah like after after a good swim whether it’s training session whether it’s a swim in the ocean or just being yeah being out in the ocean it’s just like you know I feel like I could be a

a yoga influencer on on YouTube or something like that it’s just I could come up with all the all the lovely quotes so it’s yeah there’s something to something to being in the water that just attracts me and I think a lot of

a huge amount of swimmers and particularly here we’ve had so many people start open water swimming from last year when the pools closed and and it’s that aspect of it I think that has kept so many of them going even when the pools did reopen there’s been a huge huge growth of open water swimmers for that reason I believe beautiful so even out of chaos comes a blessing right I mean you got all these open water swimmers and so from that perspective and I and I agree with you you you when you when you get in the water and you feel like you’ve done what you needed to do on that particular day you get out of yourself you should be saying to yourself get out of the water and saying well done well done today and and and I congratulate myself all the time I mean all those things so that’s me going back to the mindset saying hey I did this I did something that a lot of people don’t do I’m not the best but I’m getting better because that’s what life is all about

we develop as swimmers we develop as people and we develop as athletes and again if we go back go to the three P’s be patient be persistent the rest of it should take care of itself very nicely some come quicker others take more time but like you said somewhere just a little while ago some will give up and never really

get the the feel of success if they just stayed with it a little bit longer and I believe as coaches you and I as coaches and it’s it’s it’s our job to instill that faith in the athlete go and stay with this it’s in there I always tell athletes it’s in there it’s my job to bring it out but your job to recognize it once you recognize it I bring it out you recognize it we got our something something something very very powerful here so um so from that perspective I agree with you what you’re saying and it was just fun to be able to share little thoughts like that with you from from my own personal philosophy because I believe as a as a good coach I want to I want to I want to if I’m going to tell an athlete you got to get in the water in those days you don’t feel like it was a one day last week I stood on the side of the deck I had uh I think it was 21 2200 meters to swim I’m going I would rather be anywhere else but here right now wasn’t feeling it

I had things on my mind got in and I’m saying why wouldn’t I’ve done this why would I have not got into water today get this done so from that perspective that’s my advice for athletes just get in do what your coach tells them buy into the process one other bit of advice I always tell athletes and you know you’ve heard this before and you’ve said this to athletes all the time going whoa whoa whoa focus on your lane don’t worry about what she’s doing to the left don’t worry about he’s doing it right she swims better he swims better you focus on what you need to do to get better yeah you can learn from those athletes but we can get overwhelmed by what other athletes are doing and it takes to focus on what we need to do athletes like I said the belief systems our ability to breathe and breathe well I tell athletes all time on deck if you cannot demonstrate good breathing for me on deck there’s a strong probability you will not be able to do it

in the water so the breath work outside of the water becomes critical buoyancy balance and body position being relaxed or those if you notice there’s rhyme and reason

then at the tail end I’ll show you how to do the necessary biomechanics but we get those first four under check the rest becomes somewhat easier so

yeah absolutely and Frank the only downside to getting you and I on a call is that we could go on forever yes sir because we just love this stuff so I appreciate you coming on and sharing it’s been a pleasure your experience in coaching and swimming and for anyone who’s listening to this maybe they’re in Arizona or nearby how can they get in touch with you and what’s the website social media that kind of thing yeah I’m on my website is soul swim solutions S-O-L-E SwimSolutions.com and I’m on Instagram the same tag soul swim solutions and I get people to reach out to me and ask questions I’m sure as you do or send a video and ask for input I’m more than happy I’m all about building success in other people’s lives that’s what I am as a coach it’s all about what I can do to see others succeed meet and not only meet but exceed their expectations because if I can get an athlete to do that and then they can carry it over to someone else you and I have created

a nice nice wave you know what I’m saying my friend so yeah absolutely well get in touch with that with Frank we’ll have those details in the in the show notes and thanks again Frank this has been this has been great and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed chatting with you I think we’re probably very similar similar personalities and and types just on different sides of the world so I appreciate it great man I appreciate it my friend thank you very much and you stay well and very good talking to you