Um, high performance is a different way of looking at it. So it’s continual, uh, less, less, um, extreme periodization and more incremental, consistent improvement, obviously a lot more recovery. Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast. My guest today is the one and only Sam Fenton and Sam, we’ve known each other for many years now, I think it’s been, um, oh, I can’t even think back probably almost 20 years, close to. Yeah. 2002, we’re probably 2003. We were into each other for the first time. Yeah. It’s about 18 years in the way that, that we kind of got introduced to each other was that my dad, who was Muslim coach at the time, he was running some strength and conditioning, some pretty basic stuff. But for that time it was, you know, it was quite advanced for country swimming.

And then I remember he always tells the story that you came along and you said, I think I can do a better job than what you’re doing. And, uh, that kind of got your foot in the door. And since then you’ve been working not only with the truck and swim club, which, which I grew up with and I still compete for now and then, but, um, you’ve gone on and done a huge range of things. Some is swimming related. Some is related to high performance and a whole bunch of other things. So I think it’d be useful for the people on the call, just a bit of a quick, I guess, background on some of the things that you’ve done over the past couple of years in terms of what you’ve studied, what you, who you’ve worked with and who you’ve learned from. And just a bit of a rundown on those things. Cause I think it’s, uh, it’s pretty impressive. Um, look, I guess, uh, one of the key things that, um, I’ve always believed, I guess, about having a career in a regional area in Tralgan is that

you can have excellence right where you are. And I think this COVID things really proved it that we don’t actually need to, you don’t need to be in the city. You don’t need to be in an institute of sport as such that you can do all of those things locally. And your dad, Brian was, um, was probably a big reason for me sticking around in Tralgan because there was someone, because I certainly wasn’t getting that in other places where I was working and through other people around the area, but, um, I certainly got that through Brian. So, so Brian’s certainly the key figure, um, in terms of, uh, my learning around working with athletes and working with, uh, that whole system, I guess, but, uh, from the, I guess, the strength and conditioning and sports science perspective, my big, uh, my big thing has to been to find out, you know, what the best are doing and then bring that home to our home program. So, um, I guess it started in 2004, 2005.

In that perspective, I did an internship at the Victorian Institute of Sport during that time. That’s when Michael Klim was doing his rehab program, uh, rehabbing his shoulder and, um, having his last, last crack at getting back in the pool and I got to, and I just, I just ferociously took notes and diagrams of all of his exercises and, and took note of what he did back then. So that was, uh, and I got to spend that time with, uh, sitting across from Bernard Savage, who was a, um, who’s one of the early versions of a high-performance manager, uh, back in the day, back in those days, um, high-performance managers are all over the place now, but back then it was a pretty, uh, it was a new concept, I guess. Um, so, yeah, from there, I did, uh, you know, I, I learned lots of stuff off as many people as I could, um, all over the place, uh, one of the, one of the big turning points in changing, changing the program too was, um, I went to a

homebush, I was doing my strength conditioning level two up there in Sydney and, uh, I, I went to see the, um, David, David Wilkins, and I think it was, who was a previous head coach, um, the Australian swim team and, um, and had a look at the program there and he was coaching the juniors, uh, or the under 15s or whatever it was. And, uh, there wasn’t much going on there and, and, uh, he was sort of on the back end of his career, having a coffee, sitting in a plastic chair and, and, uh, not really doing a whole lot, just, um, addressing a few complaints here and there about the cold water and that sort of thing in, in homebush, you know, which is this amazing facility. And then up on the deck, I could see the, uh, the Australian dive team doing their strength and conditioning warm-up. So I, um, I went, I went up there and again, just ferociously took notes and came up with all of these, uh, things that I could take home and apply.

And, and you were, you were the recipient of that. You would have been doing a lot of those exercises that I learned poolside from the Australian dive team. Um, so from there, I guess I just kept learning, just kept, um, benchmarking, going and looking at different programs around the place. Uh, and then in 2015, um, or recently I served my master of high performance sport through University of Canberra. So that was awesome because I had access to all of the sports scientists, um, and, uh, everything that was around the Australian Institute of Sport, um, and, and learning from those guys who are also lecturers at, at the University of Canberra. Um, and that was, that was just a real turning point. And that’s where I actually did some real research in terms of, uh, the underwater dolphin kick. And I learned about, um, I guess everything I could about the, about the underwater dolphin kick in particular and performance in that space.

Um, and then more recently, um, through PhD studies, I’ve been doing some work with, uh, Dick Telford and the, and, uh, his son, Rowan Telford around physical literacy, uh, and those sort of things. And, um, I finished working with those guys and now I’m doing physical literacy, uh, research with local schools in, in my local area. So, um, yeah, I guess it’s been a long, that’s a long answer, but, uh, yeah, that’s, uh, that’s what I’m into now is, is taking that high performance approach and, uh, building that into a physical literacy approach. So the high performance approach is, is away from the peak performance. So peak performance, uh, by definition has a trough. So if you’re going to peak, you’ve got a trough. Um, high performance is a different way of looking at it. So it’s continual, uh, less, less, um, extreme, um, periodization and more incremental, consistent improvement, obviously a lot more recovery.

That’s one of the big things in high performance is you’ll see a lot more recovery focus now. Um, and the high performance approach and the physical literacy approach together means that, you know, before there was a, it was a peak, it was just a triangle and you’d cut, cut, cut, cut to get to the top of the triangle. Um, and, and that’s, you know, and that’s your elite athletes is this tiny little less than 1% of the population up there. But, uh, the approach now is, is now there’s, yes, there’s, there’s still that peak there, but it looks, it’s off on this angle. And then everyone here as they, as they fall out of high performance sport. So like yourself Brent, you’re in a national program. And as you decide to move on with your career or do other things in, uh, in life, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve filled up this other area here, which is lifelong, um, physical activity. So enjoying lifelong physical activity. So it’s a different approach, a much more

holistic approach, uh, and a much healthier approach, unless, um, getting rid of everyone that doesn’t meet your standards. There’s always things for them to do. And hopefully loving the sport, you know, loving swimming, riding, running and that sort of thing. I think that’s a, um, that’s a good segue into what we’ll talk about here. And this is going to be a three-part, um, podcast cause I think there’s, there’s three really good topics that we’ll, that we’ll chat about. And, uh, I think people who sort of see, see that or go, yeah, I probably want to listen to all of them. But if it’s a really long podcast, they probably, you know, they may not get the chance. So the three topics that we’ll talk about are that sort of ankle flexibility and strength. And I’m really curious to ask you, you know, some questions about it, because I work a lot with adults and triathletes and look at, um, you’ve sort of seen it on the more high performance

or elite end with, with that and what makes a difference with that. But I’m curious just to see what we can, um, derive from that for people with maybe poor ankle flexibility and, um, yeah, and who find themselves going backwards when they’re kicking with the board. The other topic we’ll talk about is, um, deep core work. So, um, curious as to some exercise with that and, um, you said it, a lot of people just, just miss it. So curious about that. And then the third one, which we’ll talk about, um, right now is what you just mentioned there with the physical literacy and you talked about high performance where it’s, it’s almost like the kind of Chinese model where you’ve got all these people, you know, doing the sport, you don’t make that level. You’re out. You keep, you know, going and it’s just, um, you retain the only the very best, but now they’re moving more towards that physical fitness and health for, for life.

So with, with, with that in mind, what are some of the things that you’ve, you’ve found and what the, what is different between the clubs and I guess the sporting bodies that do that well compared to those that don’t and how’s that changing?

Okay. So from the high performance perspective you’re talking about. Yeah, like that, that shift from just the, like, you know, the pyramid, just where people get cut to the other one. Absolutely. So well, as, as we know from a lot of

ex-ex-swimmers, not just from, from our swimming club, but we’ve, we’ve seen a lot of swimmers that we’ve dealt with over the years go to swimming clubs where it’s, it’s very, it’s very cutthroat.

And, you know, being in a, in a situation where you’ve got only the best of the best swimmers get to, you know, swim in this lane and if you’re not so good you swing that lane and if there’s anything else you get quarantined and sort of put out in the outer lane and just treated like a number.

That’s, you know, and we’ve seen, we’ve seen the, the downfall of that and the downfall of that is for some people, this is a lifelong issues that they’ll have from, I wouldn’t say abuse is, is a really strong word but, but if you’ve been belittled and made to feel small and that’s happened over and over and over to you again, there’s, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of people that have been through that system where they’ve been cut, cut, cut and ostracised that they, you know, their mental health is, is the, is the victim of that. So, yeah, I think, I think this approach that we’ve got now, which is a much more, the high performance approach is about incremental improvement in all areas. So, it’s not just, it’s not just the physicality, it’s not just treating the body and the, and the athlete as a machine, it’s treating them as a whole person and focusing on their wellness, focusing on their load management, making sure that

they’re not getting overuse injuries but making sure that they’re recovering and a lot more focus on wellness and mental health. So, a lot of training, breathwork meditation and also a lot of time in the foam roller, a lot of recovery and, you know, as you know, the ice baths and making sure you’ve got appropriate nutrition and hydration and all of those sort of things. But certainly a move away from things like, you know, from the nutrition point of view, diet plans, where you’re calorie accounting and all of that sort of stuff, there’s been a big move away from that and just holistic approach and we’ve got a lot more science out now in nutrition. So, we know that looking after our athletes isn’t about giving them the best diet, it’s about making sure they’re eating really healthy and making sure they’re eating in a way that serves them as an individual because everyone is really individual in how they respond to exercise and everyone is

really individual in how they respond to food. So, having an open approach and a consultative approach with athletes is the big difference. Yeah, I love that and that’s certainly the approach that I like to take with people and I mean, I work primarily with adults and a lot of them have only just got back in the pool after like 20, 25 years out of the water from say school and that’s not necessarily from overtraining and just being beat down or anything, but you do see it particularly after their kids are a bit older and that sort of thing, like they get back in the water or they start triathlon and they’re just starting to get that physical fitness back and so it’s great to see that but particularly for the age groupers, the younger kids and going on from there, you look at that approach and I guess the question in the back of my mind there is does the high end of the performance, you know, your elites are major professionals,

does that suffer as a result of taking this, I’d call it a softer approach in a way, you know, it’s not the hard line approach, does that suffer as a result of taking this softer approach?

Yeah, quite the opposite. So that’s the whole thing about it. So as you know, like I’ve done some benchmarking around the place and including around the world.

One of those coaches that I went and spent some time with was a middle distance coach at Stanford University because running is something I’ve been really interested in in the last couple of years in particular. Certainly really keen on watching swimming programs and swim strength and conditioning but I think good running is really, really fundamental to enjoying movement and enjoying your life and having a healthy life. So he’s approach and this is one of and this and he took Stanford from they had a 56 year drought of winning middle distance running. So so for the first time they got for the I think it was a 400 yard dash or whatever they call it, but they broke a 56 year drought with his coach that came along and and gave that approach high performance approach, which is small incremental improvements, lots of recovery but I found the same thing going through their swim strength and conditioning and their swim coach program as

well as well as their track stuff was that they’re really if you turn up and you’re not feeling well, generally you don’t train. So and they weren’t too scientific about it. They weren’t doing high rate variability or anything like that. They were just they they did measure weight. So if you came in dehydrated or underweight or anything like that, they would they would say first have a chat with you and say well what’s wrong and what’s changed in the last couple of days. You know and if exams are on and those sort of things the athletes under high stress, understanding that stress builds upon stress. So nutritional stress, stress, environmental stress,

you know, workout stress and then on top of that exam stress and study stress and work stress and social stress. So if those things all compound, we know that we’re going to get worse performance but you’re going to train worse as well and that’s not going to improve your performance. So a lot more rest

is what’s led to these, you know, big changes in performance. So our performance

across the world hasn’t gone backwards with a high performance profile approach. So our athletes are experiencing much high levels of mental health, mental awareness,

but they’re also they’re also a lot happier and performing better going faster and all of those sort of things. I had a chat to Dick Telford who trained Robert Dickistella and those guys back in the days and he’s a multi-multi, you know Olympic gold medal winning coach with his athletes

and he’s got a 40-year-old that he’s been training recently and, you know, and getting PBs in her mid-40s and I said, Dick, what are you doing differently?

That’s, you know, she’s getting all of these PBs at this really late stage in her career and it just smiled and he’s like, oh, yeah, a bit more rest. That’s that’s it. So the approach is really different and for those, you know, hardcore coaches that are go hard or go home it’s really challenging for them to start resting their athletes a little bit more but the returns are bigger.

Yeah, and it’s it’s good that that is a result of a smarter approach. Now, you don’t want it to go backwards and like it makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, I think of two weeks ago, right, we sold our house and we bought a house and the stress of like of that period just like and like we were I could feel I was really stressed and so last week I trained normally and I was pushing pretty hard and I could feel myself getting a bit sick but I knew that I was getting sick and it was the stress of that

of buying something the house and then compounded with starting back with from going zero from zero coaching to full time again. All those things added up and then it’s just kind of put me out for about a week and so if you can just keep steady and you can rest when it’s smart to rest it’s you can just keep continuing on that path instead of just going down and going back up and you’re just fighting a it’s a hard battle it’s an uphill battle if you keep you know keep getting sick and you’re not smart about your your rest so it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah it does and if you think about I think the trajectory is the most the easiest way to think about it so so you know you might you might be training down in a hole and this is the super compensation or you know specific adaptation to impose demands theory and all that sort of stuff but so you know you drop them in a hole they super compensate drop in a hole again super compensate you keep doing that and you get here but but

if you if you do incremental improvements which a lot of coaches have just done naturally and a lot of athletes have just done naturally if you do incremental improvements and then it’s a lot smoother that the improvements aren’t as fast the adaptations aren’t as extreme but they’re more consistent and one of the key things I think a lot of people miss in periodized in heavily periodized programs and heavy weight training for athletes is that tendons and soft tissue does not regenerate the same way muscles do so you can get as a strengthening addition coach I can get you super strong super quick no worries with that but I can’t get your tendons strong it’s going to take years and years to get your tendons to adapt because they have a much lower blood supply so and they grow differently bones and and tendons grow differently so you can’t get all of those things to adapt together but you can make it appear that way through heavy periodized training

but we know it doesn’t work so the lesson there is just longer slower approach to building that up

yeah the body adapts slowly so you can lose weight really fast you can lose body fat real fast you can put on muscle real fast you can do all of those things but they’re all superficial

your tendons your your neural improvement so the way that your neurons are firing and wiring those things adapt incrementally and slowly so and and just on that too you know the way your neurons fire and wire if you’re training tired and sloppy or stressed that’s what you’re training your body to do you’re training yourself to move like that so which makes no sense from it from your point of view so

so with if a coach came to you and they said all right I like this approach I’ve been a hard ass in the past but now I now want to change it up and I want to take this approach where I’m looking after my athletes more and it’s a much more long-term approach for them and hopefully a happier approach what are three or three to five things that you would say to them to maybe change in their program and the way they go about things yep so first first is always warm ups so that’s where within you know your first 10 to 15 minutes of how you approach training that’s where you can make the biggest bang for your buck so and that’s that’s always an ongoing conversation we just had that we just had that conversation in our last coaches meeting because I’m not as involved with all of the you know the warm ups and the strength and conditioning as I used to be and I’ve got Trent there

doing a lot of the sessions now for the strength and conditioning so so the the warm ups have started going different directions and talking prior to getting in the water yet prior to getting in the water so we just want to make sure that they’re going in the right direction so within within the

just that first yeah it doesn’t take much that first 10 to 15 minutes if you’re if you’re doing the right activities there it makes a huge difference and there’s some recent research being done through University of Canberra as well around you know what’s the ultimate warm-up for swimming and it’s really it’s it’s basic stuff and there’s and and different parts of the warm-up have different effects but yeah there’s a 12 hour effect of doing a little bit of heavy strength

and you know and the the mobility work and those sort of things have a lasting effect throughout the day if you do some full activation so you activate your whole body as hard as you can and you can do that through skipping as hard as you can for 30 seconds just just little things like that make a huge difference on on your performance on the day but but if you do that you know training session in training session out the the effect you know the trajectory changes and you start improving faster and just on that too so we’re talking about you want to you want to actually warm up so talking skipping talking maybe some activation with like TheraBands and that kind of thing as well is that yep that’s that’s included and with the mobility stuff what sort of mobility stuff are you doing because obviously static stretching yeah it’s kind of that’s not what you’re meant to do before before swimming these days what kind of mobility you’re doing pre-training

yeah so people like static stretching because it feels good but it feels good because it has an anesthetic effect so

but an anesthetic effect you know the last thing you would do if you wanted to improve your speaking performance is put some anesthetic in your mouth yeah it doesn’t make sense to do that right so

so it’s important that your mobility work is is dynamic it’s waking your muscles up but it’s it’s waking you up it’s waking up here in your your neurons and your nervous system as well so breath work how you’re breathing can be effective really super effective but also

that’s why I like foam rolling as well because because it makes you aware so that bit that you’re rolling that’s really tender you’re actually connecting your brain to those muscles and when you when you’re

yeah rolling on a on a consistent basis you’re you’re improving your connection to your skin to your senses which improves your

your proprioception and your coordination so and how you go from a receptor to a motor unit and how you control your movement is really really important that’s you know and we call it our business control because that’s what it’s all about it’s about being having a feeling of control but also being able to control your body it’s yeah that’s interesting I was listening to this is somewhat related Mark Matthews his big wave surfer he’s retired now but I was just listening to him on a podcast and he was saying that every morning he’ll go out and surf and on the way down to the surf for what do you say for it was like 30 seconds I think that he’ll close his eyes and he’ll just walk down and the other stuff around you know it’s not just a clear path but it’s that 30 seconds where he’s switched off the visual component of

you know you can’t see anything and so he’s walking down and he’s and then you can’t he becomes really grounded and aware of everything else like you hear the birds you hear the waves you feel the sound on your feet and it just really enhances those other things and it brings him into the moment and that’s particularly what you need when you’re swimming but I think also so for surfing but you also need that for swimming so I went for a run this morning closed my eyes for probably 40-50 meters now and then and it was really interesting you know I could I heard things that I wouldn’t necessarily hear I was much more conscious of the ground under my feet so yeah that sort of stuff just coming into your senses is very useful especially yeah I know a lot of the some as I work with are up in their thinking brain a lot and so at the clinic I try and get them to go into their feeling brain a lot more especially when they move from drills into the actual swimming

because if you’re overthinking your swimming you’re so mechanical it’s all robotic and there’s no fluency to it no there’s you actually cannot process that much information you actually need to go into that zone so when and when you do go into the and you know and it’s called the zone you’re actually going into Alfred and Theta waves in your brain so which is allowing you to access your entire subconscious and the and that’s why that’s why that’s why all the best athletes in the world put more fundamentals over and over and over again you know and you see all these things on YouTube you know Kobe Bryant keeps getting asked why he keeps doing the fundamentals but you know from basketball as you see you know Steph Curry and all the other basketballers doing exactly the same thing doing the fundamentals over and over and over again

it’s because you need to you need those things to be on automatic pilot so that you can worry about what’s actually going on in the game and so you can be reacting to what’s going on but all of the skills are on automatic pilot there there in the rest of your brain so

there’s a really a couple of really good books on specifically sort of this concept one is the Rise of Superman I don’t know if you’ve come across that book it’s a really really good book about extreme athletes and extreme human performance and how far we’ve come in that space and another one is the talent code by Dan Coyle

in and which is all about the the growth and the wrapping of of Mylan around in terms of the building of skill so it goes through all of the 10,000 our theories and all of those sort of things but

a couple of great books that really break it down for you in getting into the zone and like you said you know getting out of that prefrontal cortex getting out of that that thinking brain where you think you can control everything that you’re aware of you can’t that’s a very little bit of tiny little bit of brain power to access your entire body you know and the neurons in your hands are the same as the neurons in your brain there’s just a bit more of it in your gray matter your entire body is thinking and moving and sensing and creating and some of that a lot of that is going to your spine back out through your

unit so you you have motor units in your spine so they don’t even reach your brain so so you can’t possibly think that you can think your way into

more skilled movement you can’t yeah that’s interesting you have to repeat it let your body repeat those processes which again is why we’re you know what we’re talking about before if you’re training tired if you’re training stressed if you’re training at a low level you’re training to move like that you’re you’re actually teaching your body to move in a painful way or a tired way and even when you’re feeling great that’s how you’re going to move unfortunately and I and I think if you’ve got a set you’ve got a set routine is stick to pre-training like and routines and habits are are so key I reckon like makes me think of so I’ve had a guy a coach Nam Baldwin on the podcast and he was McFanning’s coach and there were he was there at the the pipeline masters and he had to I think make the semifinals at the pipeline masters and to win his second world title and the night before his brother passed away and so he heard about that it was dealing with that and then in the morning

he’s up and he’s he’s surfing in the it was I think it was like the quarters and so the what he had to do is go into his ritual which is sitting on the beach closing his eyes picks up some sand rubs his hands together like this and this is the ritual that he trained himself with for the last 12 months and he was able to get into the zone and actually go on and win the world title and clinched in like the last 30 seconds and it was just an amazing thing to watch and I didn’t know about all that stuff in the background until I heard Nam talk about it but it’s just that particularly at a high performance or elite level it’s um being so good at being able to go on to that zone in the moments where it really counts yeah yeah and it’s it’s something that you practice and you can practice

yeah like that you can practice sitting on the beach you can but the but the those steps the one step that leads into another leads into another those routines

absolutely crucial to that and so we’ve talked to um so we talked about pre-training all right that’s um it’s good to have a a warm up routine that flies you up gets you activated and gets you in the moment and feeling what would be the some other things that you’d recommend to a coach that is looking to to go this way look at load so

so this is look this is one of the toughest thing for coaches I think is to manage the load of their athletes so

and less unless you’ve got a whole physical preparation team and a high performance manager looking after this for you it’s it’s really difficult to manage the levels of activity that that someone’s doing and manage it properly so so if you’ve been out of the water for six weeks or out of or out of the gym for that matter so you’re out of the water out of the gym whatever your activity is

a lot of people come back from that break or that holiday or you know they might have just had the flu or something like that but they come back expecting to

take you know pick up where they left off and it makes from our high performance point of view it makes no sense whatsoever to do that you’ve got to come back at you know where scientifically like you can measure it but you know maybe somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of what you’re doing quick for and then build that back up incrementally so so high performance is easy like it is super easy but from a human behavior point of view it’s really really hard because no one drop their weights down no one wants to come back and do a shorter ride then then the ride that they were doing or a shorter run and the run that they were doing you know their long run week whatever it might be so

so to encourage people to do that it’s it feels deflating or whatever it is

but you know I’m sure you know from triathletes and people that do a lot of long distance work is that people gradually over time get better at it and get better at managing themselves which is part of the reason it’s not just physical adaptation part of the reason people get better in their late 20s early 30s is because they start to mature and their ego starts to they can put their ego aside and train sensibly whereas up you know as you know like ego is a lot bigger in the early 20s especially and you just want to push yourself and push yourself to the limits and going backwards is not an option but you know often that might be forced upon you through an injury I feel like I’ve I feel like I’ve lost some of my edge because look I’ve still got I’ve certainly still got some ego but I think it’s a lot less than what it was

particularly when I was 19 20 and even like late teenage years as well it’s like it’s just reduced a lot from there like you just don’t care as much about what other people think and you don’t have as much of you tied up in the results that you you get I find so or it probably shifts to other things I reckon so yeah it’s which is a good thing especially when it comes to training smarter and I think I’m I’m definitely doing that I’m training a lot less than what I was but can still get pretty similar results I reckon and yeah that’s definitely from I’ve done the hard work in the early years but it’s it’s also from you just you know what what counts and what’s going to actually make a difference and and count to that fitness rather than just over training and I think like with Brian with my dad it like was a I was in a way kind of I didn’t want to not go to training just because I didn’t feel like it like it always go to training

had exams or something I said oh yeah to mind if I just not go and it would really happen but I think I hope he says you know that I don’t need to train but like whenever I asked I said of course you know it doesn’t that’s fine but back then it was like it seemed like a really big deal to to miss training but I’m glad he wasn’t a coach or a parent it’s like no you got to go like it’s going to it means life or death whether you go to this training session or not

yeah yeah and I think that’s you know it’s it’s one of those things

um but back to back to the you know what’s what’s the key bit of advice I’d give in this area is is to manage load is follow the 10% rule so um or maybe or maybe I’d call it a 60 percent 10 percent so if you’ve been away for more than a month come back at somewhere between 60 and 80 percent

don’t be scared to do that because you’ll adapt a lot quicker otherwise you’ll be sore and not want to train and have all of these emotional issues as well

and and you get back into a lightning fast if you come back at a load so and and you feel a lot better doing that too so it actually increases your motivation but the 10% rule is don’t don’t do more than 10% this week to what you did last week because again back to your tendons and your soft tissue your soft tissue can’t adapt that fast so don’t don’t do more than 10% this week than what you did last week the only reason you would ever do that is because you’re trying to get fit in a hurry you’re trying to get strong in a hurry and like I said yes you can do that you can lose weight fast you can get strong fast

can’t keep up

yeah that makes a lot of sense and uh so we’ve talked about load we’ve talked about warm-up before training what other things

wow if

if there was one more thing to say

do strength and conditioning I guess understand that there’s there’s more to an athlete’s body than

just the repetitions of that particular sport so as you know if it was only freestyle if you only did freestyle your body would become very imbalanced which is and and a simple approach to that is do freestyle and backstroke so mix it up with some backstroke to balance your body out a bit but

even then you’re still going to get your body twisted because you’re just not balancing it out so you need to balance your body out from your sport so I think and that’s one of the misconceptions around strengthening and dishing that and especially young strengthening and dishing coaches are all about strength and power and I certainly was like that too I’m like I can get you powerful I can get you strong and you know and and I remember thinking this I’m talking about ego

I you know I think I said it to Brian in the early 2000s too he goes I said the only limiting factor is is their ability to do exactly what I tell them to do

I look back at that and go I can’t believe I said that I know

but but you need you need to balance your body out so you need to whatever you do repetitively over and over again your body is going to

you know go out of balance because you’re doing a lot of it you know probably and so you need strengthening and dishing to balance out the shape of your body and to balance out your joints so that your joints don’t become you know one sided strong on one side weak on the other and like a tent you know if you put gyrobs up on one side of the tent but not the other tense going to fall over at some stage awesome well I think that’s a pretty good place to leave it for that for that topic and for this this episode so coming away from that you know the things that that I’m sort of taking away from that is got a rest listen to your body stress whether it’s work whether it’s family whether it’s sport whether it’s physical activity that all of that stuff compounds and yeah and you’ve got to you’ve got to take the rest when it’s when it’s calling as I should have done two weeks ago and then also yeah pre-training routine is really important and things like therabands

and skipping and and rolling out using a foam roll and that sort of stuff is very important and then

so it’s just cut out what was that and mobility work and mobility work yeah and then and load looking at load as well and just making sure that you increasing in the the right amounts and not going from 0 to 100 which I’ve probably done twice during these two lockdowns I think so yeah I I’m great at receiving advice not great at actually applying at some time so that’s fantastic thanks to that Sam and we’ll be back with another episode where we’re going to look at ankle mobility and strength to help with freestyle and butterfly kick and how that relates to to the elite swimmers awesome thank you thank you thanks for your time 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