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 Bate and Shaft. Now, Bate and we’ve known each other for a long time. And we first got to know each other through just through swimming and coaching. But about seven years ago, actually, you introduced me to this app that you created called Skillist. And this is what we’ve been using to do analysis and coach people at our clinics, because this is the greatest analysis tool that I’ve come across and use as part of our swimming and coaching. So I wanted to get you on the podcast today to talk a bit about the app itself. And it doesn’t need to, you don’t need to sell the app. It’s just amazing. I’m going to talk about it. But I want to get you on just to talk about how athletes

and coaches can use video analysis and how to use remote coaching to improve. Because I’ve had a lot of experience over the last couple of years with you, Skillist, for about seven years now. It’s only gotten better. So I just wanted to get you on to talk a bit about that. So welcome to the podcast. Awesome, mate. Thanks so much for having me. I’m a long-time listener, so this is what we call. Before I heard about Skillist and found out what you were doing, we were running clinics and we do underwater filming and analysis. And I would employ someone two days a week to name, export, download, re-upload, and then send out the videos. It was a cumbersome process. And it just made me not like, I almost didn’t want to run the clinics because there’s so much backend work afterwards to get everything out. And then you introduced me to Skillist. And what we do now is like, it’s just we film, upload it or add it to the app.

I do the analysis and I’m talking over drawing lines and angles. And then I hit stop after that recording. And then when I get back home, I just hit upload and it’s done. The person can get the video. They can get their analysis and communicate back and forth. So it’s literally saved me two days of full-time employment of someone to do all this backend work, which was really clunky and sometimes we get things wrong there too. Like it just makes things so simple. So it’s just been the biggest, it’s just been such a game changer for what we do for in-person coaching. And I think a lot of swim coaches don’t actually know about it because I mean, you primarily golf out. That’s how it started, but now you’re branching into other sports. But do you want to like tell those listening like how did this come about? What, why did you create it? Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, we created it for a bunch of different reasons, but the primary one was that

because the platform itself is obviously this incredible in-person tool that, you know, the way you use it, you’ve done over six and a half thousand lessons on the platform now. But the cool thing about it is that it’s like the number one online lesson tool in golf, right? So anyone in the world, any coach in the world and any student in the world can like interact with each other completely remotely. So obviously during COVID, it was, you know, fantastic for us, terrible event, obviously, but incredible for golfers. Like to be able to literally stand in their backyard, you know, put up a net, get balls and interact with the best coaches around the world. So it is this beautiful combination of an in-person tool, but this incredible online tool and that inspiration came many years ago. It was like 20 years ago, I, because I’m a PGA member, I’m a teaching pro, you know, 20 years ago, I remember getting my first ever golf lesson,

it was 25 years ago, I got my first golf lesson and I was just inspired by the whole event, like how you could move someone’s body and change their wrist angles and it completely changed their ball flight. And I was just like blown away and I turned to the coach and said, right, how do I do this for the rest of my life? And I meant coaching, I didn’t mean, like how do I learn how to become a pro player? I just loved the idea that you could fix someone’s golf swing so quickly and help their game. And I’ve always been a bit of a technique freak, grew up swimming, absolutely loved swimming. That’s how you and I know each other. You were actually giving me swimming lessons even before you got on to skill us. But what happened during my sort of growth and process? I moved to Queensland. I know I’ve worked with this guy, this coach called Gary Edwin, who’s one of the greatest golf coaches in the world. He’s a player that won like $80 million globally

playing on all tours around the world. And Gary was literally doing online lessons 20 years ago. But his version of online lessons, like even before I got there in 2002, people were sending VHS tapes, right? Of their golf swing doing from like Holland and New York. It was unbelievable. He’d then create a video and send it back through the mail to, you know, for them to what they need to work on with their motion and things like that. But obviously that had evolved by the time I got there, email was getting bigger, video sharing inside emails and nightmare, but people were so desperate for his IP that go to any lengths to like send their golf swing. So even like online banking wasn’t even working properly at that stage, PayPal was, you know, fledgling and YouTube. Like it was just a nine meter share video. But people were going, doing anything to get his information. So I was watching what was happening. I was like, well, this is clearly the future

when someone figures out how to make it actually work properly. And then I went overseas. I taught over in Europe and Southeast Asia. And when I was overseas, and this is just so applicable to all sports and any coach out there and any student, any swimmer out there will be able to appreciate this. When I had the student in front of me, it was amazing. Like you could fix their ball flight. They hit it the best they’d ever hit it. So it was swimming. It’s the fastest they’ve ever moved through the water. I totally can feel that. But as soon as they disappeared, it was like, it would just go, like they’d have it for three days. And then, you know, they come back two or three weeks later and they’re like, yeah, I had it going for a while. I was pretty good, but I’ve lost it. I didn’t know ever feel myself. I didn’t know what I was looking at. And so basically, you know, we sort of then, you know, then in probably about eight years ago,

I was teaching one of my students who was a student obviously coming at the same problem from the opposite end where, which the main problems were, I need to interact with you far more often than this. Like, you know, a brief interaction standing on the mat. Like that’s, as I’ve said to my students now, that’s 2% of it. Like the mat interaction or the driving range interaction or the pool interaction, that’s like 2% of it. It’s like what you’re doing on your own, which is the most important bit. But then I was also acutely aware that every coach out there was right for a student, but that student might necessarily be in their geographical area. So the coach that I learned everything from, this guy Gary Edward, was unbelievably different in the way he taught to everyone else. Like literally, you couldn’t like get two more diametrically opposed models from what he believed to what the, you know, the average person believed.

And it’s the same in swimming. Like you watch, I’m not gonna name any names, but like there’s so many, you know, styles you watched, you know, on Instagram and everywhere. It’s like, well, that guy’s saying that thing and that girl’s saying that thing and that guy’s. So obviously it’s true for some people, but what we had to do was create a marketplace that not only allowed you to coach in person, coach people around the world, but be discoverable by our students, by swimmers, by golfers all around the world, essentially. So, so now when you go in and have a look at your profile, Brenton, that’s got like, this is what Brenton is, this is how much he charges for online lessons, this is where he, you know, coaches it and he’s done 6,000 golf lessons. And these are all of these ratings and reviews of which I was reading one of your reviews the other day, mate, and I don’t know if you saw it, but the gentleman said unequivocally,

the best sports coach at any sport in the world or something like, wow, he’s good. I’ll take back. Yeah, exactly. But there’s no other platform in the world that actually allows a coach to have a consumer-facing profile that makes them discoverable by any student or swimmer, a golfer, whatever it might be around the world. So the exciting thing is now, Brenton, I suppose, is that we’re now for the very first time. I’ve been holding back for seven years and Brenton’s been the only coach, literally the only coach outside of golf for seven years that’s been using the platform, but we’ve proven that it does work in swimming and we’re now launching and swimming quite literally in the next day or so. By the time this gets out, it will be up and running, so you’ll be able to click through. This episode of the podcast is proudly brought to you by our sponsor, Form Smart Swim Goggles. They’re more than a pair of goggles.

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I like that I know my split for the first 50 and the 100 and the 150. So every single lap I’m getting that feedback on what my pace is. And I find it’s such an important tool for being able to not only have different gears where you can switch between the different speeds that you wanna swim, but it helps you develop those gears and it helps you intuitively know how fast you need to go to before you’re going to blow up or before you’re going to go a little bit too hard. So it helps you just get really good at judging your pace for when you do go to a race. And even if you’re not wearing the goggles in a race, it’s that intuition and that ability to develop your pacing that these goggles can really help with. To get your pair of Form Goggles and save 15% off, use our link formswim.com forward slash effortless or use the coupon effortless at checkout. And that will get you 15% off your pair of goggles using our special link formswim.com forward slash effortless

or the code effortless at checkout. Yeah, it’s really exciting to have that ability for swimmers or triathletes to be able to go through skillist and choose a coach that they feel is right for them. And then they can just send their swimming videos through and get an analysis, get a lesson from that person. There’s going to be some elite swimmers on there. And we’re gonna have one coming up on this podcast as well, who people will see really soon. And then also elite coaches and in swimming. And I think triathlon as well. I think there’ll be a lot that will sort of come on board. And for me, like this is kind of my bread and butter. This is what I do at Stroke Analysis, it’s feedback. So by sort of sharing this I’m opening up the options of people to choose from different coaches. And as you said, I might not be the right person to coach someone, whatever they’re working towards. They might have a better option.

So by sharing all of this, it’s like, well, I might have less swimmers they’re sending their videos to me but I really like this platform and I’ve just found it so beneficial as a coach. And then for the athletes that I work with, it’s just like, it’s magic. What I love seeing is if I’m coaching in person and we upload a video, we’re going through the analysis. People are seeing themselves swim in there. They’re jaws on the floor like, oh my God, I cannot believe that is me. And then we slow it down and ask them, what can you, like, is there anything you can see here that you think you could improve? And sometimes people will get it and they’re like, okay, my hips are dropping. I can see them over rotating. But then sometimes people are like, I’ve got no idea where to start. And either way, it’s like the videos can show and you really just need to slow it down. And even me personally, like I can’t pick things up

straight away. Sometimes I just need to slow it down and dig a little bit deeper. And with being able to just sort of go frame by frame with it to be able to draw the lines and the angles and just use the tool, it makes it much easier to do that. And I also want to just talk about filming tips as well because I get asked this so often, how do I film myself swimming? Well, if you don’t have a friend or coach there to film you, then what I’d suggest is if you’ve got a phone just front and side views, good. And if you’ve got a GoPro or an underwater camera or even a phone, just get like a waterproof pouch as long as your phone’s somewhat water resistant in case it does leak, but just get a waterproof pouch and film yourself from the front and side angles as well. Just make sure you’re far enough away from the camera. So probably a lane across so you can see everything that’s happening. And the other thing as well with that too

if you have a GoPro, you can get like a tripod. They’re called Gorillapods, they’ve got bendable legs and you can wrap that around a lane line, you can wrap it to the stairs or to the handles on the stairs or you can just sit on the bottom of the pool which a lot of the swimmers like coach do. So there’s a lot of, or you can get a GoPro clamp as well and attach that to the lane line as well. So there’s lots of options there but something like a tripod with bendable legs that you can wrap around something or sit on the bottom of the pool and angle it that is, that’s all you need. So it takes a little bit to get set up but once you’ve got it, like it’s very easy and the swimmers that I coach are just like, yep, all right, five minutes so I can film these different angles and I just set, then they just send it to me and it’s just a part of their training. That’s awesome, yeah. And I mean, I use it with you. Like I was lucky enough, I will,

my wife goes to the gym and I’ll be in the pool doing my version of a set. And as she comes down, like at the end of the set I’ll be like, hey, can you just grab your phone I’ll grab my phone and capture this. She gets me coming up and down the lane and then goes around to 90 degrees, I suppose side on it and captures that as well. And I mean, even without the underwater GoPro stuff which is probably, if you could get that, that’s unbelievable but I just get so much out of working just those angles that I source of footage myself. We’re actually up on my Bucks party a few months ago and we went out on a boat out in the middle of Sydney in Carver and we had a race out around, you know out around the yachts and came back and my brother actually captured it and I was like, hey what form was pretty good there considering I’ve had three years sort of things. So it was good to be able to see it and go, oh wow that’s like, that’s really getting towards where

I want it to look sort of thing. So it’s great. Yeah. And I want to sort of just touch on some of the themes that you’ve seen working well with remote coaching because I know a lot of the triathletes that I know and that I coach they have a triathlon coach that is remote they’re sending them programs via training peaks or today’s plan. And so they’ve been coached remotely already and I think it’s people are quite accustomed to that remote coaching now whereas back 10 years ago, not so much necessarily. So what are some themes that you’ve seen working well with a good student coach relationship in golf because you know, hundreds of golf coaches and athletes using the platform and I’m sure there’s been some common threads there that you see helping people make good improvements. Totally. It’s sort of the way the platform is that like you know this now Brenton and you watch the evolution of it like probably when we first set out to build it

what we built was something which was it was taking the in-person experience and putting it online, right? So we sort of just took, all right well the platform is all about video analysis effectively and it was just about video sharing and like it was about hardcore analysis and stuff like that but as times are bold that you’ve seen these tools we’ve built in you know like there’s now a messenger inside, you know skillist which is like I message on steroids it’s got like, you know Zoom integrated it’s got the analysis tool it’s got payments integrated into it’s got voice and text and all that sort of stuff obviously is that what a golf lesson is and hopefully you know what these swimming lessons and the swimming relationships become is they become like what we call it the little and often learning model. So rather than having huge amounts of IP just dumped on you in one go you might actually interact with your coach

four or five or six times a week now that interaction can be anything from leaving a voice message where you say you’ve just swung like you’ve just competed in like an Olympic triathlon and like you basically just jump on, you know jump on the messenger and you’re paying the subscription to your coach as well so it’s like it’s basically 24 hour access with all these cool consoles inside it and you’re just leaving voice messages you might share a video from the race but you might like, you know or you might leave some stat sheets or something like that but like a lesson is not just about here is my golf swing in terms of golf like fix my goals when give me a half an hour breakdown of this swing a golf lesson literally might be a voice message where a student jumps on after a practice session goes okay I think I understand that feel you’re talking about should I be thinking about like this blah blah blah blah leaves the voice

bang the coach gets to what it replies that’s what we’re that is what learning is now about like in golf right it’s these constant and often interactions that aren’t you know impossible to digest like you know sometimes when you’re in a pool like even when I’ve had in-person lessons with you it’s quite intimidating to get borrowers to try and move through water because you’re trying to get through the water but you’re also trying to be perfect you know because you I’ve only got you there for half an hour and I’m trying to get my you know my technique absolutely perfect and I’m sort of like oh God I don’t know what I look like and this is super intimidating but if I could just like do like literally capture one little bit and send it back to you and go is this what you meant like when I’m working it on it on my own that’s everything like that’s a lesson like just like a you and you don’t even need to like do a complete breakdown

of the new stroke you’re just like you’re on the right track keep doing those drills or whatever it might be does that make sense so that’s where it’s now evolved into okay you now pay bridge and basically to have 24 hour access to your brain and so I can just bounce ideas off you you might even see something like if you watch a meet on TV and you see someone with a ridiculous stroke or something and you capture it on your phone send it to Brenton and go this guy’s doing straight arm stuff and why should I be like trying that and you’re like oh don’t do that or whatever it might be so that’s what that’s what it’s become let’s just like this amazing conversational tool video sharing, video analysis is a big part of it but yeah it’s just so much more than that now I think I think to before I started doing remote coaching I was of the well I was thinking I don’t think that could work you know the only way you can improve

is with someone looking at you and giving you in-person guidance except that now it’s just so much easier to get video with the phone it’s just so easy to get that video and then there’s no pressure when that person’s doing they’re swimming, they’re doing the filming to like to perform on the spot so they’ll just record it as you say send it off and I’ll be like okay this looks good but you need to go deep with your hand for this catch and whereas in a lesson sometimes people they tighten up a bit like I’ve got to get this right now or I’ll never get it right so yeah it’s something that I was really surprised by with how effective remote coaching can be and I think it just puts people at ease more they know they’ve got more time to be able to get things right and then they usually swim better because they’re a bit more relaxed and they can have that back and forth more regularly totally, yeah totally I mean I think about a golf lesson environment

is a horrible learning environment like you’ve got like an hour to get it done you’ve got this intimidating golf bro standing over the top of you like just do it this way blah blah blah and you’re standing there like semi frozen the worst environment is trying to execute really you know like it’s absolutely terrible you’re trying to get an absolute perfect and it’s so often like I’ll be say I’m giving someone a golf lesson it’s only when you walk away and you go and get some more balls for them or whatever it is they’re like I’ve got it I’m flushing it and then you get back there and they shake the next one along the ground or something like that and it’s because like you know it’s that pressure that like prevents you from actually executing the right way so what you want is like all right give me my information give me my IP I’m gonna go and work it down on my own I’m gonna upload some stuff to you and I’m also gonna go on a journey of self discovery

which is really important as well like I remember you said that to me as well once where you were like all right here’s two little things you should be thinking about and so maybe they don’t both work together but just keep your eye on the clock and see which one moves you through the water a bit faster right and so you can do that in your own time and then you can go yeah I think this is I’ve got it like I’m moving faster and he is you know some footage of that so yeah it’s just that that you know do it in your own time in a comfortable environment lack of pressure and then constant failure back hmm yeah I like even at clinics so we film at the start and look people will generally swim pretty close to what they would normally swim in the beginning sometimes a little bit quicker because the pressure of the camera is there and they’re going hard and you know we might say swim at Ironman pace and they’re going at like 100 meter pace

however like yeah we can still see probably what they look like now we got them we do the analysis and we get in the water and we go through drills and we start working on things and then before we do the last filming I had them do a couple of 50s just practice what you know what we looked at in the video and generally they’re looking pretty good there they’re at least making some changes and then when we get the camera out not all the time but quite often starts to fall apart of it they’re like oh I know I need to work on my rotation except like I’m also thinking about my kick in my and my catch and then it tends to fall apart because I’m thinking about too much there so if I could have this secret camera this hidden camera set up in those last couple of 50s before we film they would look a lot a lot better so I explain to them look it’s not about how you look here it’s about what you practice when you go away and these are the things I want you to work on

and I want you to work on this one thing to start with for a couple of weeks when you feel like that’s changing move on to the next one and so on yeah that’s good that’s great yeah the hard thing with golf is that which is so is different to swimming in a way is that you’re always reacting to the ball flight so like you know in golf like people like they think they get a good one they think they’ve made a good swing if that makes sense sort of thing so yeah anyway like a sort of a bit besides the point but it’s look these are all these are the challenges of being like having a coach student relationship and helping students understand what it takes to get better and what a process it is but what we’ve done as coaches in the past we’ve been jits to be perfectly honest we’ve been terrible like what we we’re quite transactional at times we’re just like all right when they’re in front of me I’ll give me that give them my full attention

but then they’re on their own when they’re not standing in front of when they’re not standing in front of me we don’t give them the you know the tools required like to understand all right these are the drills this is how often you need to do it I expect to see you here send something through then and like yeah it’s um I think as coaches look I don’t want to speak for swim coaches definitely but I know in the golf space we’ve definitely been a little bit lazy in that sense

and in terms of the like the the tools some of the ones that I really like being able to use with skill is so one is the comparison so you can pull up a got someone’s video you can pull up I’ve got like I’ve got a library of elite swimmers looking at different angles and a range of different styles as well like different freestyle strikes and same for the other strikes as well so sometimes I’ll pull up the comparison there I’ll look at the front view and say all right this is this is what Katie Lidecky is doing through her her catch and her pull see here how you’re going out really wide and then you’re coming way under the body all right we want to we want to look like this and you can just sort of link it up and play it frame by frame through that movement and I think for for most people they’re like wow okay I can see what I need to do here this is really clear where I’m going wrong and being able to just pull that up is a massive one

and the other one that I really like is like the angles tool is just is really simple except it’s just it opens people’s eyes up and we’ve got like a range that we want people to be in with their shoulder rotation with their catch also with their head position so there’s all these sort of different boxes that we want people to fit in to be within the ideal range no matter what sort of style that they’ve they’ve got and when we can just show them ah here at 78% this should be 30 to 40 degrees but to them it’s really clear that you know that they need to make a change there and rather than just telling them change this you can show them very clearly with the angles or compared to an elite swimmer that all right this is what needs to happen and it builds up that belief and I think trust in that like you know what you’re doing you they can see what a what a good swimmer’s doing as well the visual the visual is everything

like the visual from like seeing how other people are doing it but then as you said before the visual of seeing yourself relative to that like when there is just like I remember getting my very first golf lesson like you know 25 years ago I remember walking in going oh can’t be much wrong with my belt swimming this has got to be perfect and then I saw it on camera I was like oh my god that’s a train wreck sort of and you know you can I can explain things to my students until I’m blue in the face because feel is not real right because the way something feels is not how it is they won’t believe you like unless they see it they’re like no it can’t be that it can’t possibly be that and then when you use the visual it’s like oh my god like it is that and so they can push past the way something feels they can push past how bad something feels because then they know they’re getting closer to what could be you know right

that you know in verticom is sort of thing but it’s that’s one of the hardest challenges that we have as coaches is because you only need to change something a millimeter on camera and it feels like three mates you know in terms of their body feel so once you can film it show them you know how far out it sort of is and they can appreciate that because they’ve got the comparison they then also know how differently it has to feel for them to move it right so they then exaggerate things they get better used to exaggeration which is the hardest thing in like for what we do like it is we have to get people to exaggerate so hard to move it a millimeter so the visual is critical for helping students have that you know that that mental dissonance like this can’t possibly be right and they look at it go that’s perfect yeah yeah that I was I’m working with a guy at the moment on his on his swim and one of the things he does is he’s very shallow through

his catch so he’s in a good position to start his catch and then he’s basically just pulling straight through and even moving the hand and the arm almost shallower than where he started so I need but he needs to get his hand and forearm going downwards more just to get a better catch get more surface area and so we’ve got it a little bit deeper one arm’s looking good the other arm is is still too shallow but he’s gotten it down a bit and so the recent feedback that I gave him I said I want you to do 2050s with 20 seconds in between just keep it 60 percent and I want you to count your strokes for each 50 now I want you to experiment with what you’re doing with your right arm because this is the one he’s too shallow with and I said look I want you to feel like you’re going straight down super deep you’re not even like bending the elbow and just count your strokes and then I want you to do one where you feel like you’re keeping

the the hand really wide because he’s kind of coming under underneath himself and the fingers are pointing to the side and so I gave him a couple of other options to be able to just try different things experiment I said let yourself just fail here but the one that gives you the lowest stroke count provided you push off the same provided your efforts the same the one that gives you the lowest stroke count is likely the one that’s going to be the best change so use that feedback there in that 2050s just to figure out what what you need to do there but like you said you’ve got to exaggerate it because yeah it’s just it just feels so different than what you what you what you think totally and you know getting back to the platform and I don’t want to you know carry on too much about it we know it’s great but um so that conversation you’ve had with him can happen over the process you know the sort of the duration of a week or a month

do you know what I mean like if you just see them in person and go okay good luck with that especially if you’re doing clinics like you’re doing which you’re only in Newcastle or Sydney or wherever you are at any one time you know you might only go there three times a year sort of thing like you know how how are they supposed to know if they’re doing the right thing unless they have that ability to keep bouncing off you um and so that conversation you just discussed imagine like he like can literally go and do that drill again the next day upload some footage or even just leave a voice asking you a question or even upload some time it’s awesome data from you know from his watch you know from his garment or whatever it might be and you can bounce off that and keep working with them I just think you know that’s it’s got to be the future of progression surely yeah I think so and I mean even just because with on the student side of

things do they have the ability to slow things down as well like they can essentially maybe not use I know can they use all the tools there as well yeah so students can analyze their own swing sorry swing their own stroke and like you know and they can save it and then they can upload like their own analysis of their own stroke to you and say hey is this enough angle have I got enough rotation is my kick hard enough whatever it might be

it’s really cool because I I just see and like we put a lot I put a lot of videos out on YouTube analyzing strokes and people see that which is really cool and I think the the swimming IQ of the people that come to clinics has risen over the last sort of five to ten years that I’ve been doing that because people have watched the videos and they know what they should be working towards so I certainly see a lot more awareness around what a good stroke is and the things that they’re they’re aiming for and so with the ability to actually analyze themselves with the tool I think that’s that’s great because I often get asked what tool do you use for analysis because coaches I used to be used to be the one that coaches would use and I mean that’s not that’s not supported anymore and like it’s I think it’s just it’s already shut down but I think it’s shutting down end of the year or something and but even even then like it’s just it just doesn’t compare to

what what I’m able to do with skill us now. Awesome. Yeah I mean the cool thing about what we’ve obviously built is that it’s a complete end-to-end solution so once students go home they become part of your digital academy they can watch public videos that you’ve made they can pay to continue to interact with you so we’ve got payments and all that into into integrated so at the click of a couple of buttons they can get 24-hour access to you you then obviously a viewable like any swimmer around the world to be able to discard you know your profile sort of things so it’s it’s sort of not just an analysis tool is it it’s sort of like it’s a marketplace an end-to-end solution and then obviously for students it’s a place where they can store all their analysis and and be able to ideally you know I’ll stick with you obviously Branson but discover coaches and you know and be able to interact with them whenever they want. Yeah and look it might sound like we’re

like trying to sell skill us through debt the reason I wanted to get you on is because obviously I’ve used it for seven years it is it has made the biggest difference with in-person clinics that we’ve run it’s basically just the loudest to to run them because if I was still having to do what we were doing to get the videos out I don’t think I’d want to it was just such a pain the ass for all the back end work and now it’s just made it so so easy. Similarly on that just really really quickly we used to have golf coaches that literally in their Instagram page would say no online lessons in capital letters from it because there’s a nightmare like how did people used to like email stuff and expect it for free and then you’d have to you know do an analysis on it so all of you now every single you know golf pros around the world like we’ve got 900 coaches or something that you know sort of weekly active or something coaching on the app and and teaching online

on the app I should say now they just put their little deep link inside their Instagram account that in within two clicks any student around the world can be literally in their profile and chatting to them and potentially paying them for online lessons. Yeah it is just such a great tool so if you’re if you’re an athlete listening to this get on to your coach whether you’re a triathlon coach or you swim coach and like even if you’re in a squad and I’d be thinking if you’re like even a junior swimmer like just if your coach sets up a skillist profile they can record you swimming at training you know and then just upload it to the app and you can just watch that back and they might they’ll be able to do an analysis in person as well it doesn’t need to take take long or if you’re like a triathlete you’re working remotely with with your coach you could they can set up a profile and skillist and you could just send them your video of you swimming

and get some feedback it’s a really easy way to get that feedback and it makes it easy for the coach as well because I think that’s a big one too like squad coaches I know are very time poor they’ve got a lot going on and for them just to be able to give like a few tips here and there once a week once a fortnight to the soon as it can make a huge difference and this is a way where it can it doesn’t have to be time consuming or it doesn’t have to be extra admin for them it’s something that can be done in the session and done really you know really easily so if you’re an athlete like I think that would be like just say hey check this skillist thing out I think you’d be be worthwhile just like can you give me a hand here or if you’re a coach then obviously I think the the benefits are pretty obvious there of how you can use it with you with your athletes 100% and obviously I’d love to help any any coach or student out there to get on board

it as well and understand what it’s all about but quite literally I’m just so excited about this because like having spoken to you know like I was in America recently and you’re having this gentleman on next week onto your podcast so we won’t sort of we won’t do any spoilers but one of the you know greatest swimmers of our generation really and you know he was just saying that like for him well as successful as he is he just can’t even make that much money I think he does all right obviously but you know there’s 100 Olympic swimmers in his states that you know don’t quite make the money they shouldn’t if we can give them an opportunity as well the coach on the platform and train kids and adults from around the world like it’s we really just hope we can change the way the sport is learned and taught and help coaches ideally make a little bit more money and students get faster in the water more efficiently as well like that’s the thing like getting

lessons from you in person it’s not the cheapest thing in the world and to get the best you know the most out of that money they’re spending you need that constant interaction that follow up

well I mean I aside from the clinics I don’t even do face-to-face lessons anymore because I just can’t I just I don’t have the the capacity for I don’t have the time to to do it whereas with with skillers you know I can do things I can do online lessons and just makes it so much easier for me with you know everything I’ve got going on so yeah it’s it’s a great tool and I just want to share this with those that are listening because whether you are an athlete or a coach there is a benefit there you can you can use it to get faster and if you haven’t done any film before just whip out your phone and get someone to to film you and I know there’s submit yeah sometimes pools won’t allow it but if you’re in that situation where you can it’s it’s the best thing you can do for your swim because it’s going to be eye-opening for better or worse it’s going to be eye-opening and it will certainly give you an idea of what you can do to get faster absolutely yeah so

yeah really excited to launch and I suppose we’ll put the link maybe in the show notes or something brand to for anyone that wants to come and join skillist and as I said like more than happy my email is also bayden at skillist.com so B-A-D-E bit of a strange one but I’m going to live with it and yeah at skillist.com and if you email me I can help anyone on their journey as well fantastic thanks for being on the podcast thanks bye 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.effortlessswimming.com