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 Kenneth Graham and Kenneth is currently the lead scientist at EO, which if you’ve listened to our podcast in a few episodes, we had Brent Beston, who’s been working with EO as well. They’ve developed this device called The Swim Better, which I’ve been a part of as well, and I’ve gotten to know Kenneth over the last couple of months through working together on that device. Kenneth, welcome to the podcast. Your background is a sports scientist, 14 years at New South Wales Institute of Sport and working at a high level on the scientific side of things. I’ve been really interested in how you view things because I see myself as anything that’s really scientific is above me. I don’t think that way, but you’re

coming at things from that angle. I’ve learned a lot from listening to how you are looking at things with improving swimming. I’m interested to talk a bit more about that today for those listening and how that can actually help them become better swimmers. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks, Brenton. Let’s talk a little bit about your background in elite sport and working as a sports scientist. What’s the last 30 years? How would you sort of summarise it in a couple of minutes? I suppose the best way is it’s been so much fun. Basically, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the best athletes and coaches in the world and through that I suppose be challenged as a scientist to come up with the best information to improve athletic performance, both as a scientist working directly with the coach, but also from a research perspective in terms of looking ahead at what’s happening going to happen in sport in the next three to

five years and what will we need to have in place? You sent through an email a couple of months ago just looking at how they have previously measured force in swimming and you sent through this picture of it’s like an underwater picture outside on and there’s like these wooden looking boards under the water about a metre apart and you said that’s how they used to measure force in swimming? They still do. The system is the acronym is or the children version is the MAG system and what it does it has a series of paddles one and a half metres apart down the pool underwater and they have a force transducer so that’s the swimmer is swimming along. They’ve got to hook their hand on onto the board and use that to push themselves off and the forces are measured and through the video we can look at the swim technique. The challenge is obviously it forces a swimmer into a stroke pattern that may not be their normal stroke pattern

and their normal performance model. And so with the I know how excited you were about developing the the swim better about how it measures force and direction it’s obviously not attached to anything aside from your hands so having that sort of information that’s highly accurate and just gives this data that we’ve never been able to capture before. What was it about the advice that sort of excited you and thought oh this is just so different to what has been done in the past just from your sort of sports science background? I think it comes at it from two levels in other sports such as cycling rowing canoeing we’ve had force and power measuring systems the SRM cranks the most known to triathletes and cyclists but the assistance for rowing and kiking swimming has always been I suppose the poor cousin in being able to have something that’s easily usable in the pool and with rapid feedback and you know and this is what you know for me it was an exciting

opportunity to work and develop something that allows that to happen. Yeah it’s for me when I sort of started looking at I thought it’d be so good to put some numbers and data behind the stuff that I look at on a daily basis with the underwater filming and well like what is the difference between someone who let’s say they’re swimming a 110 pace for an Ironman swim which is a really good pace compared to even someone who might be swimming like a 130 or 140 pace like what do we see the difference being with the with the force and the and the direction and one of the things I actually found most interesting when I started looking in it is it’s not all it’s not about trying to produce more force necessarily it’s about being able to produce it at the right time and in the right direction can you talk a little bit about about that and what you’ve been looking at with it? Yeah I think you’ve actually nailed it there when we look at swimmers and

swimming has one of the biggest differentiates between a slower swimmer and a faster swimmer in terms of the efficiency of the technique so how little work a top swimmer is doing but also the efficiency of the technique in that how much of what they are doing is actually in a propulsive direction so where we see that the technical difference is high end swimmers the good technique means that they’re actually using a lot less energy at the same swimming speed and when they aim to produce high power outputs most of it is going in driving them forward down the pool. Yeah and when we do the breakdown if you look at a an individual stroke with the swim batter you can see the percentage of propulsive force essentially force going going back behind the swimmer you can see the downward force sideward force and and so on and I remember capturing you’re capturing a fairly average swimmer with it and the downwards force was quite large quite and and then you can

compare it to someone who is swimming really well that you just see that significant portion of it being being in a propulsive direction. Yeah and I think that’s the advantage of the quantifying in what direction to the forces are going because to the to the person themselves they’re going I’m swimming hard and you know they are they’re putting in a lot of effort but it’s not just what effort it’s and as you indicated it’s where in the stroke but and it’s also reducing any of the forces that are actually non-propulsive or are increasing the drag. That’s why you look at a really nice swimmer and it looks like they’re putting in very little effort and they can be when they’re swimming comfortably yet they can swim so so fast and the thing that I find especially new swimmers to the sport to get them to take that on board is for you to go faster you’re not necessarily going to have to go any harder or even you know perhaps

probably not even train any harder you’re probably putting in the same amount of effort as the person next to you it’s just that we’ve got to work on your technique so that the forces are going in the right direction and the technique is actually working for you rather than just having the hand pressing out to the side coming way under the body or whatever it might be and that’s a challenge for a lot of people when they swim the whole idea of I need to slow things down you know slow your stroke down work on getting the motor pattern that replication that practice as opposed to I’m going to get in the pool and chase the person in the lane next to me or I don’t want them swimming past me you know you’ve almost got to get the ego away to focus on what works best for you technically and refine your stroke to be as effective as you can and then you can worry about racing the person in the lane next to you yeah it’s someone asked me the other day what’s more important is it is it

fitness or is it is it technique and it’s well obviously they both are but techniques more important to start with if you get a an ex ex elite swimmer who hasn’t been in the water for 30 years they could jump in and swim really well today they might not sustain it for long because they haven’t got the fitness there but techniques the thing that’s going to actually help them get get the speed so that’s first and foremost we want to get that that right and I think being able to compare swims with with the swim better like it’s not a device that you’d wear for a whole session I’d be thinking of using it for life let’s say it’d be like a 100 test swim you might do one at like like a 70 effort and then one where maybe you’re doing it as a sprint and then you might do that a week apart like you’re not going to wear it for a whole a whole session it’s just a good way to sort of check in on your technique see see where your stroke’s at and you can have that

ongoing progression with it is that sort of see how you see it being used yeah like for me it is it is a feedback tool that you’re using to get feedback and depending on the individual and the and the coach they’re working with you know someone may do you know I want you to do 100 meters let’s check the data okay now make this change and what but what you’re trying to do is get the person to associate the good numbers in terms of the swim better data and the propulsive data with what the stroke feels like and that’s going to be one of the biggest things for people using the device is that it’s not a you swim and it makes you better it helps you get better but you actually have you’re still going to have to make the effort and feel the technical model and and rehearse that and embed that in as a skill yeah there’s there’s nothing that I know of so far that can can do it for you you’ve got to be the one you know changing your

changing your stroke and and putting that work on a regular basis and it’s it’s frequency of practicing those things not time spent so one thing that I’ll try and get across the athletes is don’t do three hours of drills and then don’t do it for another month it’s the frequency that will change the habits for you and that’s where the swim better gets useful because you can use that both with a coach or away from a coach to check that you are doing things correctly that and that you’re learning to match the feel with the technique both within a session and across sessions and also you’re going to get feedback you’re going to get to see hey I’ve increased my propulsive effectiveness you know it’s gone from 70 to 75 to 80 percent and their markers that your technique is improving you know and they’re the things as an individual and not only people who swim but one of the other challenges obviously is for the

triathlete who wants to get out of the water but not get out tired and so that efficiency of your technique that ability to save energy even though you may choose not to swim any faster is going to give you an overall better performance in the triathlon and just looking at some of the basics of uh of you know how to swim swim faster do you want to just dig into to that a little bit like if we look at it in its simplest form what can people do to swim faster this podcast is brought to you by form goggles form empowers swimmers at every level to reach their goals whether they want to get stronger faster swim further or be more efficient get lap by lap motivation with real-time metrics and workout instructions right in your goggles and forms recently released form plans which included progressive series of workouts to help you achieve your fitness skills or triathlon goals you can follow along with the plan and your weekly swims will be automatically

synced to your goggles so you’ll swim through your workouts with real-time metrics and workout instructions all in your goggles so it’s like having a coach right there with you and I’ve had to look through these training plans and I think they are excellent for people who want to train for certain triathlons or reach certain fitness goals it will build on each week and a really good way to progress progressively build up your fitness so if you’d like to follow along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals then check out form goggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless and this will give you $15 off your purchase of form goggles so formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of form goggles I treat I go and look at other people’s videos and I do use effortless swimming videos I use the ones on Swimming Australia site and I’ve looked at the ones that have been developed by

yourself and Brent Best and what I think the best thing you can do is if you can ever trick your trigger situation and I was lucky enough to do this myself is get in the water next to a really good swimmer and try and mimic them you know because that’s the learning of the motor pattern and I think you know the often what people do if you can do it through practice and copying and mimicking you can learn to improve better and so you know getting you know people talk about the catch and the pull and the high elbow but it’s really hard for a lot of people to conceptualize that and I think seeing it and that’s why I think the videos are brilliant because they actually explain to you what it looks like and you know with the swim better it’s actually not only telling you what it looks like it’s actually going to tell you how are you doing it because on occasion people spend a lot of energy to look good rather than reduce the energy and be good

yeah it’s um it’s funny when I’m working with someone they’ll you know I might say I need to come in a little bit more in in this part of the stroke and I said yeah I’m doing that I’m doing that but they haven’t haven’t changed it so that’s where like video video doesn’t lie but then especially with like the the data bears like it’s not gonna lie if you’re if you’re still pressing down with your catch rather than starting to get it to angle back or we look at the path of the hand which you can can track with it too like it’s going to tell you where you’re at with with the path of it too so it’s really good to have that that feedback of whether or not the change that you think you’re making is actually being made because our proprioception isn’t always great and especially in a body of like water it’s um it’s often even harder to you know to know where you are one of the things I’ve often done is to actually use a pool boy

just because then you’re actually now not even having to work work on holding body position so if you are working on the stroke you can slow things down even more and really get get it you can focus on what things feel like not there’s so many things happening around me and you know getting that getting people to actually attend to the things that this that should be focusing on yeah I’m a massive fan of using the pool boy especially when you’re working on your your catch and pull because your body position sorted your your legs your hips they’re sorted you don’t have to worry about that that half your body’s taken care of and you can just focus on what’s happening out the front and like this morning I went training hurt my knee last week so I haven’t been able to kick so I just had the pool boy in and I was just I could just focus on my stroke and my catch and it was great like I had a really good session and I felt like my stroke was

going really well because that bottom half was taken care of yeah and it’s just because it just simplifies where your brain needs to be yeah you know in the same with the use of you know a snorkel the same thing again you’re reducing the things that you’re trying to coordinate to focus on the things you want to get the feel of and then bring in the increased degree of complexity can you talk a little bit about like I know you’ve worked with a lot of different sports but what like that’s obviously one is just simplifying the thing that people focus on what are some of those things that you’ve seen helping elite athletes make those changes to their technique or the way they do things like how do you try and get them to make the changes because for anyone I think it’s like especially a habit they’ve had for a very long time it can be difficult to to change but how would you go about it like yeah whatever there’s a few things you can do

one of the tricks of increasing proprioception so you may even just use pieces of tape around your elbow so you get that stretch on your skin when you’re in the right and the wrong positions the full body the full body suits are actually fantastic because of the compression and that that they provided they were really good at providing proprioceptive feedback and in you know we use compression in a number of sports to improve balanced posture technique and but it but it is about where possible getting the person the opportunity to focus on the things that are most important at that time and that’s why the use of the poor boy and the snorkel just reduce all the things you’re trying to do your bodies in one position and you can focus on the stroke and the same if you’re working on kick you know using a kickboard and again just focusing on but again don’t try and race doing the doing the quality work away from other people can be an advantage

or be the first person off in the line and so you’re there’s that competitive I’ve got to work hard disappears initially and just keep building up going faster with good technique and testing yourself that’s that’s really interesting one of the things that I feel like my pretty for the last like a year or so I’ve pretty much all only swam in a squad whereas prior to that I was doing probably 75 percent of my swims on my own and I feel like being in the squad I’ve my techniques probably suffered a bit because it’s all about hit the times race you know whereas when I was on my own I was just much more focused on what I was doing and I think my technique was probably actually a little bit a little bit better so it’s it is good and like if you can combine the two where you get that you know you get the fitness you get the camaraderie and you know the racing and the speed in a squad but have some sessions on your own I’ve found that combination to be

yeah really powerful and even things like doing some sessions short course because you you can use the turn of the gen effectively to reset your brain to go back and okay I’m gonna on each turn I’m now going to go and focus on my entry or my in my catch whereas people have a tendency for their mind to wander and but yeah but by breaking it down into shorter segments you can reinforce that learning and and that focus yeah absolutely and in terms of like we look at swim speed right it’s a combination of stroke length and how long it takes you to complete a stroke so your cadence essentially it’s about finding the right balance obviously but how do you sort of look at that and I know it’s obviously different for different swimmers but what’s your sort of take on that and where does your mind go to when someone’s looking to find speed well one of the things that we’ve actually done over the years is periodically you actually do a set of swims of gradually

increasing speed and you can plot you know from the speed over a known distance and doing rating you can actually plot your stroke length and so you can actually look at your stroke length against your swim speed to understand you know where is my optimal stroke length at what speed is it occurring and and that learning and that tracking again gives you that feedback on thing as things change what’s changing so if I am swimming quicker it’s because I’ve actually got along the stroke or is it because I’ve pushed the rating up so you’re learning and understanding and always refining as to the reason that changes are occurring and it’s it’s one of the things that I don’t think a lot of the athletes that I coach would probably understand that side of it so what I’m what I’m referring to here is let’s say you’re swimming 50 meters we’ll call it pull it 50 meters let’s imagine there’s no push off the wall right so you’re swimming straight away let’s just for for this example

let’s say it took you 50 strokes to complete that 50 meters and it was one second to complete each stroke so it’d take you 50 seconds for the lap now that would be a stroke rate of 60 strokes per minute because it’s one stroke per second now if we just played with those numbers so you got 50 strokes let’s say you picked up the rating a bit all right you did 50 strokes in that lap but we went to I’m just trying to keep it simple for math sake but it took you 0.8 of a second instead to complete each stroke so you picked up the rating so I’m just trying to do the numbers 1.2 1.2 no if you’ve taken well if you’ve taken 50 strokes still but you’ve upped the rating you’ve either had to go faster or you’ve cut the stroke yeah so in in this example it would take you maybe 40 seconds yeah so it’d take you 40 seconds for that lap if if you’d went if you’d increased the stroke rate so you can play around with those numbers there to see what your

resulting swing speed is and like that’s kind of what you’re talking about plotting there those numbers on a graph and so you can actually yeah determine how fast you’ll swim based on yeah your stroke count and stroke rate so it’s fun to just like I’ve sort of played around with that I I look at my own stroke count per lap and if I’m swimming well for like a distance swim I might do 34 strokes a lap in a 50 meter pool and my rating yeah it depends sometimes like low 60s when I’m yeah in training and so you can play around those numbers and just see like what do I need to do to to get faster and I think for many of the picks from as I coach it’s more increase your distance per stroke that’s improving your technique she’s reduced drag increase propulsion so they’re like the main numbers that I think most people can play with but you’ve also got the cadence which is really important too and the other the other thing that people need to

interplay is if you’re doing gym work to get stronger you don’t do that away from swimming because you’ve actually got to learn to convert that increase strength and power into swimming faster and you you can see individuals who will go and do blocks of training to get stronger and they come back and that I’m not swimming any quicker well you actually haven’t learned to apply that strength and power to your propulsion and so you see people pulling holes in water and we see it in a number like in other sports as well in kayaking and that way people get so much stronger but because they haven’t spent the time of learning to apply that strength and power into the technical model they’re actually not gaining a performance benefit what you said don’t do it away from swimming like what do you mean by that can you go into a bit more detail um by not doing it away from swimming it means that it should be integrated

into the program so you should be doing you shouldn’t just go and do a block of strength work and not and back off your swimming for a period of time in order to get stronger the two need to happen at the same time so I know of one olympic sprint runner who used to do a gym session explosive gym session of about 80 percent of his normal gym session and then go on the track and run and I said what what do you do that I said I’m I’m trying to get my brain to use on my running technique what I’ve been developing in the gym and so that keeping it close and it may not be on you know that close but don’t just separate them well away from each other and say I’m going to go and do two weeks or three weeks or four weeks of gym to get stronger then I’m going to come back into my swing and especially with the triathlete type models where people are mixing and dropping things in and adding things into the training

you do need to keep those things relatively close to the assertion maybe within a 24 hour period so that you are always learning and applying the strength and power gains to an effective propulsive technique yeah and that’s where I think something like some theraband exercises prior to getting in the pool can help or even just some stretch cord exercises working on your catch and your your pull through because yeah you’re not most the adults that I would coach we’re not looking to get really strong without swimming like it’s it’s muscular endurance you know for a lot of them but you don’t need to be really strong to be swimming well you just need to have good technique with enough you know muscular endurance to get you through your your race because if you end up going from being able to do three chin ups to 20 chin ups well that might not actually have a correlation to faster swim times and often doesn’t for a lot of the events that

the people I coach are training for obviously if it’s like a 50 or 100 freestyle you do need to be quite strong and you see some of the especially some of the like the elite women I think I’ve seen some do 20 or 30 chin ups like they’re really strong for 100 free but it’s it’s a small segment of I think the swim population and those people are swimming with a very high degree of drag on the body swimming has that challenges but it’s the thickest media that we exercise in and we and so as you try at you as you’re going for a world record to get that fractional improvements a big increases in power because of the viscosity of the water and the drag that that imposes on the body right so that’s why the sprinters are primarily doing that heavier weight work yeah because it’s that very heavy power required to get small increments in speed and what about someone who’s training for more endurance based swim events

what sort of strength are they looking to develop and how do they often go about it what you’re you’re more looking for you’re you actually are looking to be strong but you’re looking to train for strength without bulk and how and how do you what’s the difference in terms of the training the difference is to train for strength without bulk you’ve got in some ways two options you can train very heavy with very few reps and olympic lifters do that because olympic lifters want to get very powerful but they don’t work long wait because they don’t really up to the next weight category or the other one is the endurance type resistance but you’re still trying to do it with the movement with speed because power is about force with speed and so in swimming as you said if you want to get your stroke down from a one second cycle or point eight of a second cycle you actually have to move faster through the water and so there is that speed element to the movement pattern that you

again you want to practice in your other training yeah yeah makes sense and so with the with the swim better what sort of what sort of data like the image is a lot of things but is there a is there anything that sort of stands out to you or a couple that you you looked at and went yeah this is like this is something that we’ve never seen before or this is something that i think will be really useful for those swimmers that are at an elite end like where did your head go to when you saw what it’s putting out at the elite end the the simplest data the the total forces and the forces in the three different directions so the the forward backwards sidewards and upwards down that really can tell a scientist and a coach a lot about the mechanics of the swim stroke and then i think coupled with that and both at the elite end but also in the the wider population the consistency of the swim technique because a consistent technique is something

that you can more easily modify if you stretch all over the place and you know no two strokes at the same it’s going to be very hard for a coach to tell you what changes to make and so working on that the consistency of the technique and the efficiency of the technique so most of your propulsion is in the in the direction that’s pushing you forwards i think that the biggest things that you’ll get out of there in terms of the feedback model and then there’s a lot of other information such as strokes per lap and those measures which are going to help inform you of i’m getting better yeah so it’s so primarily the direction of the forces is um and the consistency of that across the tested period whether it’s be 100 200 meters um yeah that’s what you’re primarily yeah looking at and i mean you see that i guess in races too right so those swimmers that can hold their stroke the longest and can hold it all the

way through to the end will maintain their speed but those those that start to blow up they drop off and the stroke falls apart but they lose their speed and and we’ve seen in research in other sports and especially in rowing where they look at the consistency of the the stroke model and in rowing you actually have an advantage that the auras got a point of where it is actually referenced against at the rollic but what we still see even there is differences in the consistency of the elite performer and the next one or two levels down that the elite performers have a much narrower band of variance in their stroke it’s interesting so and i’m yeah i i would assume that would be the case with with swimming uh without having seen that that data but is there any other i guess is there any other sports we where you’ve seen that as well um canoeing i see it i’ve seen it in evens olympic sports such as diving that you look at the consistency of the

skill of divers to do somersault routines you know the better the athlete the the more consistent it is the the narrower the variance and that just generally means that they’ve narrowed it down to a model that is always a good technique hmm yeah so that’s interesting to to think about that so someone if someone is sort of going to the pool regularly if you can start to make your stroke more consistent so you know let’s let’s say most strokes nearly exactly the same that’s yeah that is a good thing and just looking to repeat that over and over and actually when i when i am working with people say at clinics we might get them towards the end of the clinic they might be doing say 50 percent of their strokes in a better movement let’s say they’re trying to improve their catch we’ll often see them get you know sometimes 50 percent or 30 percent of of those strokes to be improved or different to what they were doing at the start of it and then what i’m i try and communicate with

them is like keep practicing keep practicing and we just want to try and be more consistent with that change so that we get it 95 percent of the time ideally 100 but yeah we want to be more consistent with it so yeah it comes down to practice repetition but i think also just knowing that if you can just swim consistently the the whole time that is going to make a a big difference and then if you are trying to make changes you’ve got a a good reference point to make any changes from as you require yeah and and look it obviously comes with time and practice and experience in the water to be able to have that consistency so if you’ve been swimming for six months look it’s it’s going to take you a while to i think find that that consistency but it’s a good thing to um to aim for um any any sort of closing closing thoughts or anything you’d like to like to share that you think would help the listeners of this

podcast with just swimmers and triathletes i think the biggest things are consistency of your training consistency within the sessions trying to take the racing out of it when you can and being very conscious and aware of your body so you know as as your coach says something and tells you do the rehearsal and even to go to them is that right and if it is remember what that felt like and so your you as the athlete are learning what the correct technique feels like and the better you can feel that the more you’re going to be able to self correct when when you’re swimming and that’s and you know and technical improvement is about you learning and you learning to self correct and refine your skill i want to dial into just one word you said there it’s it’s feel and that’s one of the things that uh there’s often a balance between thinking a lot when you’re changing your stroke and that it has to happen you obviously

have to think about it but then once you have sort of thought about that change try and tune your mind or your body into how does it feel because subconsciously we operate in in sort of pictures in and in feeling not in not in words or other things like that so if you can if you can go by feel that is what will help you actually improve so kind of get out of your head once you once you can once you’ve taken on board the change you’re trying to make try and get out of the head and into how it feels i think that’s so so important and you know that’s the thing that all the time whether you you have a coach telling you or whether you’re going to look at the data from the feedback make sure that you’re thinking about your stroke before and then you get to look at the data because you’re not going to capture that feel otherwise so when you’re running those 100 meter efforts and and look then going to look at the data or get feedback from your coach

make sure you’re focusing on how the stroke feels and so when you’re told that it’s good or then you go okay i need to know what good feels like yes that’s that’s great great advice well Kenneth appreciate you being on the the podcast and for those listening if you’re not 100 sure what we’re talking about with the swim better i’ll put a link in the show notes so you can look up eo or eolabs swim better i’ll put a link where you can find out some more details about it but that’s how we came to meet and yeah i’m really excited to continue to work on on this project and and i’m going to be putting out a video probably about the time this podcast goes live as well just about yeah how you can use the data to improve your swing so thanks for being on the podcast this has been been great and i love being able to chat with people like yourself who are working with elite athletes in many different areas got a vast vast experience in different

sports and yeah just just learning from people like yourself so thanks for being on the podcast can it no worries thank 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