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 episode number 115 of the Effortless Swimming Podcast. My name’s Brenton Ford. My guest today is Bevin McKinnon. He’s a triathlon coach based in New Zealand. He’s also a very accomplished triathlete himself and he’s got a number of professional triathletes under his belt. And we start off the conversation by talking about an eight day fast that he’s currently on. It’s been eight days and he goes into the reason why he’s doing that and some of the health benefits that have come from it. So we kick it off right off the bat just going into this, talking about the fast and then we go into some more coaching and swimming related topics. Before we start today’s podcast, I just want to let you know what’s been happening on my side of things.

So for anyone who’s attended a freestyle clinic or a fly back and breast clinic for the juniors, then we’ve added a follow up clinic option where you can come in, you can get your filming done and then an analysis provided within a week. And we’ll give you some recommended drills and exercises just based off the analysis. So it’s a way for you to just check in with your progress, get some more feedback without having to do a full three or three and a half hour clinic again. So we’ve added quite a few locations, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, adding Canberra, Perth and Brisbane as well. So you can go to the website at effortlesswimming.com. You’ll have more details about the follow up clinic option for those people who have attended a clinic already. And it’s a great way for you just about to check in with your progress on a regular basis. So just go to effortlesswimming.com to find out more about that.

Just recently I added a second Hell Week camp to this year. So from the 4th to the 11th of October, we’re running another Hell Week camp, which is held in Thailand on the island of Phuket at Tanipura Resort. And we’ve got two spots available as the time I’m recording this. There’s two spots available for that. So there’s not many and they probably won’t last too long. So if Hell Week camp is something that you’ve been wanting to do for a while, it’s a camp that we’ve run for. This will be the fifth year in a row now. And we get more than half, half the spots that are filled up with people who are returning for a second and third, even fourth time. It gets great reviews. Really good for someone who loves to keep fit while they’re on holidays. They like a challenge and they want to improve their swimming and do it in a fantastic and amazing place to do it. Get some nice open water swimming done as well and a lot of hands on coaching,

underwater filming, analysis, and just it’s a really good holiday, but one that will also challenge you too. So the details are at effortlesswimming.com forward slash Hell Week. And as I said, there’s two spots available as of the time I’m recording this. And finally, just before we get into the podcast, the last thing I want to mention is in the middle of July, I’m going to be releasing or launching a brand new swimming paddle. And this is along with a friend of mine and someone who’s got a very comprehensive background in biomechanics, coaching and also in product design. We’ve teamed up to create a range of swim products that help you improve your technique just by the way they’re designed. And the swim paddle that we’re going to be launching is going to help you set up the catch and the early phase of the pool correctly, just by the way that it’s shaped using his background in, as I said, biomechanics and product design and my background in coaching and working

with several thousand different athletes and learning the way in which most from his end to the water, they reach and extend and set up their catch and pool. So this, this product, I’ll have some more details in the coming weeks, but I just wanted to let you know first on this podcast here about this brand new product that we’re going to be launching sometime in the middle of July. We’re going to be doing it through Kickstarter to get this product made. So we’ve got some basically some test products that have that we’ve gone through and it’s pretty much ready to be made. We’re just looking to put the final touches on it. So as I said, I’ll get you some more details as they come to hand, but some really exciting, some really good quality products that will help you improve your technique just by the way they’re designed. So a few more details to come. So let’s get into the podcast here is Bevin McKinnon.

I’m talking about his eight day fast. All right. Welcome to the effort, the swimming podcast. My guest is Bevin McKinnon from Fitter Radio and Bevin, you’re a triathlete, you’re a triathlon coach. And right now we’ve actually we’ve got the ambulance on call just waiting for you to drop off the perch because you haven’t eaten for eight days.

What’s what’s happening there? Well, yeah, obviously not a successful triathlon coaching business because I can’t afford it. It’s basically the premise behind it. I make no money from my podcast. My athletes don’t pay me. And so basically this is the life of a full-time triathlon coach disguised as dieting.

So tell us what’s what you’re doing at the moment? OK, well, I’m sure the listeners, if they’re attuned to what’s happening sort of in the nutrition space, whether it’s talking about low carbohydrate, high fat or paleo or clean eating, whatever it may be. But one of the hot trends at the moment is intermittent fasting. We’ve all fasted in different ways. If we’ve tried to weight loss over the years, if that’s been the primary driver to restricting your calories. But there’s a whole host of strong research at the moment about the benefits of fasting and what that actually may have in terms of anti-aging and improved immune system reductions in inflammation. You know, it’s even been used to try to treat cancerous cells and tumours and infections and all those different other health benefits. So I’m currently, as I have always been, which is quite a big self-experiment to knee deep in an eight day fast. I was saying earlier that I’ve had two small things.

It’s what is it? Twenty past one in the afternoon, I’ve had two small things to eat since breakfast and I’m just wondering how much longer I can last. But that’s kind of like someone complaining that they got six hours sleep instead of nine and complaining to someone who’s just had a baby and who’s not getting any sleep. So you’re eight days into it. So is it just water that you’re having at the moment? Or is there anything else? No. What’s the what’s the go first? Forty eight hours. I was water only. And then I introduced zero calorie fluids like black coffee and herbal teas.

And the only other sort of well, I’ve added electrolytes in there as well. So magnesium, Himalayan salt and only more recently, once obviously there was a fair amount of weight loss that was going on to slightly ward off against too much lean muscle mass being lost. I included some essential amino acids in there as well. But other than that, it’s been no food as such. The science would suggest that if the body actually recognises that you’ve ingested calories of any description, the premise of the fast is actually broken. And all the health benefits that I’m doing this for will be actually muted. So, yeah, that’s basically been all I’ve consumed in the last eight days. And how long are you going for? Well, if you ask my partner, I’ve gone way too long and I mean, there are some byproducts of this. And if I walk the listeners through the what I’ve experienced over the eight days, that might give them a little bit more clarity as to why it’s been such an extended fast.

Ultimately, irrespective of which kind of sort of nutrition pattern that you might follow as a person or as an athlete, whether you’re a high carb person or low carb or paleo, like I mentioned, I’m typically a low carbohydrate, high fat eater, probably quite a lean, sorry, a clean and paleo form of eating. So very little refined sugars or refined foods in any way or processed foods. So my introduction to the first couple of days of total abstinence of food was actually quite easy because I’m already quite well fat adapted and it didn’t take my body very long to start moving into a ketogenic state. And ultimately, the first 48 hours is quite important for what I’m trying to achieve in the sense that we want to run whatever glycogens in the body are completely dry. So the liver and the muscles actually use up that glycogen because no carbohydrates coming in. And once that happens, you’re typically into nutritional ketosis.

But after about the 48 hour period, then the magic starts to happen. And what I’m after here is once the body goes into ketosis and we know that there’s no carbohydrate coming into the system, then it starts to sort of want to become a little bit cannibalistic by its own default. It starts to the body starts to look around for any other internal fuel sources. So it knows it’s got fat coming in. And that’s that by default is being broken down and made into ketones to help supply fuel to the brain and fuel to the muscles. But the body starts to scavenge. And what it and for one of a bit of description, I’ll give you the scientific term it’s called autophagy. And that autophagy actually puts the body into a catabolic state. So breaking tissues down and it’s almost like recycling of cellular waste. And it’s almost like taking out the trash. So it actually looks for cells, dead cells, organelles, all the different things that are in the body that are actually a little bit toxic.

And it actually starts to try to consume them for fuel. So it actually does what is basically essentially a big, big spring clean of the body. But it only happens once you get past about that 48 hours to 36 hours of total fasting. So I did my first 48 hours. That wasn’t too hard for me. I’ve done intermittent fasting for shorter periods in the past. So it’s really just a little bit of a mind game to keep the boredom away from going to the fridge all the time. And once I got into ketosis, the other byproduct of ketosis is an exceptionally suppressed hunger. So once you’re into full ketosis, you actually probably find that you start to forget about food, which is actually why it’s been so easy for me to get to eight days. And as I say, the end is whatever I decided to be because I’m in a state where at the moment, I just don’t think about eating. Are you training at all? Yeah. Well, the interesting thing being is around about and some of the science doesn’t back this up.

But if you do enough research like I have in and around these topics, even if you go to a whole lot of holistic sites where fasting has been used in religious settings before, they all give good feedback as to what would happen through each sort of period of time that you might extend your fast for. And after the first 48 hours, the one thing that I started to experience, which was really quite bizarre, was quite an intense sort of gnawing deep pain in and around my thighs and my buttocks and my lower abdomen. And there’s no science to back this up. But a lot of the holistic websites that give a lot of information about extended fastings suggest that that’s the point where the body starts to actually release a lot of old toxins or existing toxins that are in the system. That’s a lot to do with the fact that toxins are stored in fat, but when fat becomes metabolized in a ketogenic state, it actually also releases toxins back into the bloodstream.

And these toxins are situated quite a bit around the lower intestine and that’s quite close to the spinal cord and the nerves. And the nerves obviously don’t like to be in a highly toxic state. So the pain that I was experiencing, which, and the listeners might find this funny because this nearly put me off doing the fast altogether. On the third day of the fast, I tried to go to sleep that night. And the pain was so intense that I ended up not being able to sleep the entire night. I had to sit upright on the couch downstairs watching the TV or I had to be standing where there was no pressure on the lower abdomen, the buttocks for the pain to go away. And so I was up the entire night.

But one of the suggestions was made to me by Dr. Grant Schofield, who’s written a book called What the Fast? And in point of fact, that was on our podcast as an interview a few weeks ago. He suggested to me some light exercise would be a good idea because that would actually help flush the toxins. And in point of fact, an hour spent on the wind trainer was fantastic. And the pain went away quite a bit. And in point of fact, after the third day, it disappeared completely. So since then, it hasn’t been there. And since then, it’s given me the confidence to throw some light exercise into, you know, days, you know, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And how long or what sort of intensity? Are you doing? Yeah, very low intensity.

You know, in point of fact, I don’t think I would be unable to do something of higher quality. But for me, it’s really just to keep the body moving, because ultimately, if I was doing an extended fast, by default, I would probably be fairly sedentary or most people would be very sedentary because of the fear of having such low energy. But once I’m in that ketogenic state, all my energy needs are being met by ketones. So my desire to train, I don’t think would be limited by being in a fasted state and limited by what intensity I chose to do. I probably wouldn’t feel fantastic doing top end work. But I’ve just taken the opportunity to go for the odd light jog or, you know, I have done a couple of two hour wind trainer sessions. I mainly on the wind trainer because if I went outside, I’d be fearful of falling off my bike. But no, they’ve gone fine. Wow. And are you what sort of point are you in your training?

So is this kind of downtime for you or? Yeah, no, unfortunately, because of as I mentioned, the poorly paid coaching business and not nonprofit podcast that I produce,

we’re putting a lot of emphasis on coaching at the moment. So my last time I raced with any sort of degree of of angle was Kona a couple of years ago. And since then, I haven’t actually actively raced at all. So for me, exercise now is for health and well-being. And you’ve got I mean, you’ve got a pretty big squad of a lot of pro triathletes and a lot of them are doing very, very well. So I mean, you travel to Port Mack recently, you’re going to Cairns in a couple of weeks time for the Ironman there. But is there anything you’ve changed in the last couple of years as your approach to coaching or what sort of stuff have you learned that you’ve you’ve implemented just based on the last few years and working with a wide range of athletes? Yeah, that’s that’s probably what’s made me change or evolve the most is the range of athletes I now work with. You know, when I first started out as a triathlon coach, it was age groupers and then by default, their success

and probably my success as an athlete as well meant that I sort of attracted more elite age groupers. And then as they succeeded and, you know, my profile and our podcast helped a lot in that way. And we give a lot of information about training and what we think about training. And a lot of people tune into that podcast meant that I got approached by a few pros. And so probably three, four years ago, I started coaching a couple of pros and then again, they were successful. So now I work with I think I’ve got about six or seven professional athletes, probably at least four of them are fully sustainable professional athletes and the others are aspiring. And I think it’s working with those guys that’s made me develop my skill set a lot more. It’s probably made me from, you know, the pen and paper coach of the program is everything, you know, to someone who actually understands that relationships mean a lot as well.

And in point of fact, getting to know who the athlete is and what makes them tick requires time spent talking to them and it requires time spent watching them and being involved with them. So over the years, I think creating opportunities to visually be, sorry, see the athlete, you know, whether it be at the races or training camps, being a bit more of a, sorry, a coach that’s able to travel a lot more and actually physically interact with the athletes. I think I think the biggest learning for me was probably taking Brad and Kerry to Kona last year and we spent a lot of time together and we that included a bolder training camp and working with them on a day-to-day basis for three weeks showed me that I used to be quite a data-focused coach and I still am, but the personal and the interpersonal relationships that you actually have with athletes is probably as important, if not at times more important than what the data shows us.

So I think it’s becoming a coach that only coaches a certain number of people so that you don’t actually, that you’re not sort of time poor in order to be able to spend a lot of time and personally getting to know who these people are and what makes them tick. Yeah, that’s interesting. And so for you, that’s been a big reason why you’ve moved more pretty much to just full-time coaching and just instead of probably doing 15 to 20 hours of your own training. It’s that switch to coaching now. Yeah, definitely. I realize I put a lot of energy into, geez, I don’t even know what year it was. I wanted to win the 70.3 Worlds and they were in Malulaba and I wanted to win Kona age group World Champs as well in the in the one year, which I was fortunate enough to be able to do. But it took a it was really important fact. I think my partner Chris said to me the following year, because one of the one of the benefits of winning Kona in your age group

is that you automatically qualify for the next Kona. You just have to pay your money. And I was like, oh, do I want to go back? And she looked at me and she said, there’s no way you’re going back if you try to juggle that amount of training and work at the same time because you weren’t the nicest person to be around. So, and I actually recognize that and recognize that.

Now I have to put the athlete first. And the only way that I can do that is I need those extra 20 hours of training of training time to actually invest in the athletes. And that was that was quite easy for me to do because, you know, ultimately, I do want to be the best coach that I can be. And I think part of that relationship building would only ever happen if I had extra time available for me to build those relationships. So training’s just for fun now and coaching full time. It is and how long have you been coaching for? When did you first start? Oh, man, I don’t even know. I’ve been giving people advice. Yeah, I’ve been giving people advice for whether they wanted it or not for years. So I would probably say our businesses, I don’t know, maybe eight to ten years, maybe I couldn’t even tell you because it seems that I’ve been so invested in the sport for so long that what went from being just chatting about triathlon with mates

to giving them advice to writing programs and everything like that. It’s just it just seems to have been something that I’ve done forever. Yeah. And what do you because I’m sort of similar. It’s always been about my own training. I still like to compete and train, but a lot of time is now on the coaching. What is it for you that you get most out of coaching people? What do you enjoy the most about it? I must admit, like I’ve always enjoyed the age groupers and that that’s really, really cool.

Adding the extra dimension of working with professionals where, you know, it’s life and death has added, you know, an extra edge to coaching, which I actually really, really enjoy.

You know, I think and I would be disingenuous if I said every, you know, coach should not be training and racing at the same time because not every coach is in my position where it’s a, you know, they’re working with a whole host of professionals that relying were, you know, really heavily on you. My transition to full time coaching was a little bit easier because I’d achieved probably the biggest goals that I’d ever set myself. So my ability to now live vicariously through the endeavors of my athletes is actually probably as tangible as winning on in my own right. So seeing them evolve sort of the transition from my evolution as an athlete to trying to evolve the athletes that I coach. That’s that’s something that I get a huge sense of satisfaction from. And look, I mean, age group is winning age groups and qualifying for big races is really cool. But when you see a professional athlete who’s never won an Ironman before,

win an Ironman, which has happened for me. And, you know, I’ve had, I think I might have had 20 or 25, 70.3 or challenge half distance professional wins. That’s that’s really cool. And I’m super proud of the fact that I’ve been able to to influence professional athletes when they’re sort of at the thin end of the wedge of their development. So, you know, it doesn’t matter success for my athletes is probably the strongest motivator and putting myself in a position to help to try and think of all the different things that might contribute to their success. Is, you know, it’s quite a stimulating environment to exist in on a day to day basis.

Yeah, that’s that’s interesting because it’s I heard this question asked it was on I think a recent YouTube video. I saw that someone asked this

this psychologist, how do I, you know, what’s my purpose in life? Basically what, you know, I feel like I don’t have much, much meaning. So how do I how do I get that that kind of meaning that where I’m work just tends to to fly by and I’m not counting down the hours and that sort of thing. And his response was to load yourself up with as much responsibility as you possibly can and that way many will just come on its own. And I think I think you get that with you know, if you’re coaching professional athletes where, as you said, it’s it’s life or death for them. It’s it is a lot of pressure, a lot of responsibility. And I think if you can put yourself in those sort of situations, you know, quite regularly, that’s when you are forced to step up your game. You’re forced to learn new things. You might fail here and there, but that’s when you tend to grow. And I think of maybe the most recent one for me was we ran our Hawaii camp

in March and it was it was all new. It was just just organizing that and putting something new together. It was quite it was quite daunting to think, oh, shit, is anyone actually going to want to come over here and join me? And it was the first time I was going to be working with the other coach, Gary Hurring from New Zealand. And it was just all right, let’s just do it. Let’s get it done and put it out there and see what happens. And it was it was it was so much fun and everyone had had a great time and it went really well. We’re going to run it again next year. And it was just you kind of look back at that and go, OK, it was all it was all worth it. And even though it felt like a lot of pressure to do it or responsibility, you know, it’s it all worked out really well. And so I like putting yourself in that in that sort of position because it forces you to to become better. Oh, totally. And and, you know, by default,

you know, if I didn’t have the athlete stimulating, you know, like the funny thing is if you think about me coaching myself, which I did for a number of years, I’m very complacent. I just get up every single day, never wrote myself a training program, sort of worked out what I thought I needed to do. Nothing was written down. Woke up every single day, sort of knew what I was going to do. And off I went and did it. And by default, you know, a mixture of consistent training and low injury rate and maybe some genetics that are predisposed to the sport, I got some decent results. Well, if I was to coach in that fashion,

I wouldn’t be making any money or have any clients at all. So I like the fact that it actually probably stimulates an area of my personality that innately is not necessarily me because I think it drives me to become better. And if I didn’t have that external stimulus and that reliance on me, you know, by default, by nature, it’s not really part of me. But I love the fact that I’m always about the evolution of the person. And I think we’ve all got to strive to become better in whatever ways we want to as we grow older. And I think if I hadn’t got to the point where I ran my own business, I’d be sitting in an office trying to do the least amount of work for whoever was employing me.

But when you when you run your own business, you all of a sudden change and you change your mindset and the buck stops with you. And I love the fact that I’ve created a situation where the buck does stop with me and it’s my job to find solutions. And I’m much prouder of who I am as a result of that because, you know, that’s what I attempt to do is find solutions for the athletes. Yeah, and you mentioned this before we started recording was and I find it I’m exactly the same as when you do most a lot of your work out of your out of your home because it’s obviously writing programs and changing athletes. It’s a lot of it is done from home. It’s very difficult to switch off. And yeah, it’s obviously there’s benefits to that. There’s there’s cons and yeah, it can be hard to manage it. But I don’t think I’d want to have it any other way. You know, for me, it’s kind of like that pressure of having to provide and and and have it on my watch

because I feel like I’ve got to really sort of step it step it up and just be innovative and think of new ways to do things and improve and get better. And like the freestyle clinics that we run, we’ve been going for about probably three or four years now. And it’s just it’s constantly evolving and we are continuing to make it as simple and effective as possible. Like we people who have listened to this podcast will know like I’ve mentioned this a few times, but the first clinic I ran, we did I think it was about 24 different drills. There was there was no filming, no analysis. It was quite a big group. And like that’s that’s a lot for anyone to take in. And now we just simplified it’s we just do a handful of drills. But we just focus on what are the really important concepts that if people can remember those, take those away, practice them. That’s when they start to get results. And so just simplifying it down to the the most simple version of it

is actually quite hard to do. But it’s it’s really forced me to have to to sit down and think about it to be able to to do that. So yeah, just constantly trying to to improve it is yeah, that’s that’s what makes things interesting because if it’s just the same for four years running, it’s you kind of get bored with it completely. And I see it in triathlon coaching all the time. I mean, I mean, I think I was on your podcast. I can’t remember how long ago, but I always looked across at what you were doing in Australia and was really impressed with the fact that you’d taken swimming that wasn’t working for a club and coaching swim squads as such. But taking it out into the public and making actually a business for it that could cover off all types of swimming. So I thought that was really, really brave, but obviously clever of you to do that because there’s a demand for it and you’ve created your own business.

And you’re probably operating in a space that is far less and I don’t want to use the word competitors, but other people doing the same job as you. But I look at triathlon and say there’s a whole host of people that are not evolving as triathlon coaches. And it frustrates me a little bit because they seem to have got a template that they can just regurgitate.

And part of the evolution of coaching, I believe, is that you’ve got to continue to upskill yourself to keep abreast of trends, of sports science, what’s happening at the races, how athletes are performing, what are the strategies that are being employed. And, you know, the evolution from me being just a program writer into being, you know, a jack of all trades because you’ve got to know a lot about everything. You don’t have to be a master of everything, but you need to know where to go to to get the information that you need for your athlete. You know, that means that no single training program is the same. And so I can’t just sit back here at home and go, oh, great, I’ve got my 15 athletes, I’ll just flick them the same program.

And then work and life is easy. I’m the same as you. I have, I’m talking, thinking, existing in triathlon 24-7. And by default, it means that if I’m not writing programs, I’m upskilling myself. Part of my intermittent fasting is not for eight days, but looking at is there a space within an athlete’s program in a sporting sense to include the occasional fast for whatever reason, you know, but that takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of thinking and it’s not just about program writing. So so I think, yeah, once you’re invested in what you’re trying to do, there is no clock in at nine and clock off at five. No, it’s there’s no clock in or clock out.

Yeah, it’s never ending. And yeah, yeah. And you feel like that’s what’s probably separated you from a lot of other coaches is that willingness to try new things. And I mean, surely the podcast has helped a lot. And then I guess maybe similar to me where you kind of build on your success. You take a lot of, you take some athletes and you have success with them and that starts to build. They start to refer people or the word of mouth. You know, that that does take a long time to build up. Have you found a similar thing for why you think you’ve gotten to where you are? Yeah, yeah, look, I mean, we started the podcast as you would have started yours as a way of, I think for me, maybe I’m just got a propensity to try to educate. And if I feel I see something quite clearly or a concept, then I’m not sort of reluctant to tell my peers or friends or colleagues or athletes about it. And I’m fascinated by the sport and I’m fascinated by the evolution of training

and I’m fascinated by the evolution of performance and recovery and nutrition and the way the sport’s actually evolving. So I think by default, if that’s not part and parcel of who you are as a person, then I think your coaching skillset is gonna be pretty limited. And so that’s something, you know, like the podcast for me was, you know, we had one eye on trying to attract more customers. But you mean, ultimately I’m in a position where we do bespoke coaching. We don’t offer a whole range of template training pans or anything like that. So there’s only so many athletes that I can coach and for a long time my roster has actually been full. So we do have this podcast and we’re in this unique position as a business of me not actually been able to generate any more income because I’m already chocker. But, you know, you get that working at one end. People either will listen to the podcast if they think that you’re giving good information or not.

And I think that’s probably a good illustration of whether you are giving considered thought to what you’re trying to tell people and whether the information you’re giving is relevant. So that does convert people into coaching clients. We do get a number of quite regular inquiries about coaching and then also obviously, yes, by default, I think I’ve been able to move to higher and higher levels of athletes because of the success of my athletes. I tend to really try to make sure that what we do is moving the athlete forward. And if they arrive at race day with a clear strategy on how they’re gonna draw the best out of the fitness that we’ve built, then, you know, your chances of success are quite high. And if, you know, you’re constantly getting success with athletes, then other athletes look in from the outside and say, you know, I’d like to have that kind of success as well. So yeah, it’s pretty much a twofold,

yeah, sort of story for me, but both of them have been really, really great for our business. And just from a swimming perspective, what’s been working well for, I guess you’re within your coaching and your athletes because you’re still running a squad in Auckland, is that right? Yeah, we still have our squads. Actually, funnily enough, one of the things that we did do recently, and it’s taken us a long time to do this because we’ve really wanted to make sure that we took on board the right kind of person and the right experience and the right qualifications. And we’ve employed Tim Brazier, or he’s come under our banner to start coaching privately from another training base that we’re running down in Wanaka in the bottom end of the South Island. We’re Braden Curry and Dougal Allen and a few other athletes actually reside and Tim lives down there as well. And Tim stepped out of the Triathlon New Zealand High Performance Program last year

and he still coaches a number of ITU athletes and he coaches some long distance athletes like New Zealand professional Dylan McNeese. And Tim’s expertise sits within swimming. First and foremost, that’s where he started. And so I’m in a really unique position because I can send someone like Kiwi professional Dougal Allen who lives in Wanaka along to Tim’s training squads and Tim has been applying a lot of the methodology that he’s brought from the ITU day-to-day cold face of working with athletes into his swim squads and applied that to Dougal and the like. And for an example, Dougal’s brought his Ironman PB swim down by about three or four minutes in the last couple of months that he’s been working with Tim. And I think the things that we worked with

if we use Dougal as an example is the first thing I tried to change for him was stroke rate. I’m quite keen on open water swimmers trying to utilize a much higher turnover and stroke rate than what we’d see in the pool-based swimmers. We still, and I think I talked about the first time I was on your podcast, very keen on using a swinging or a straighter recovery phase of the stroke as well to negate the restriction of the wetsuit and to the environmental conditions of swimming in the open water be it the water itself or swimming in and around a group. And so those things are definitely the key aspects that we’ve looked at technically. I know Tim is a big believer in creating what he calls a speed reserve, so that what he means by that is developing the swimmer’s ability to have a maximal speed over 50 meters that is substantially better than say their threshold swimming pace

so that we don’t find that their threshold swimming pace is actually the same pace that they swim at for 50 meters. We like to lift the ceiling on the ability over much shorter distances than their race distances so that biomechanically when they settle into their race distance speed, it’s not the best speed that they can actually produce. So it gives them a couple of gears that they can play with because I find a lot of open water swimmers, especially age group triathletes are very one-paced and an open water swim by default if you’re trying to tactically be very astute, there may be periods where you need to upregulate and downregulate depending on tactics. So those are sort of some of the broader concepts that we’re sort of bringing into what we’re looking at when we’re developing the triathlon swimmer. Yeah, that’s great. And you probably would have seen some of the Commonwealth Games triathlon. I mean, pretty much those guys at the front of the field,

very straight arm recovery for a lot of them, straight crates up there, and I mean, even though you don’t really get to see the, obviously the pacing you can only tell by the naked eye, it’s, yeah, the best thing is that they’ve got a pretty good sort of 25, 50 meter time behind them. So yeah, and what sort of things do you have them doing to develop those different speeds or that top end speed? Is it a lot of short, 25s, a lot of sprints? Yeah, yeah, a lot of sprints, a lot of 25s, 50s and the like. And a lot of it from, for me and my squads from no push off the wall starts. So I call them zero to hero type efforts. So we have to actually develop that maximal effort from a floating start because typically that’s what happens in most age group triathlon races and really trying to get that high stroke rate from the start and feeling with a concept of it feeling distinctly different to what would be their threshold stroke rate.

So not them feeling exactly the same. And then I also like to include a lot of band work, not always band only depending on the proficient swimmer, but a lot of drag with some maximal accelerations as well just to build that strength through that particular stroke as well. Yeah, that’s good. I mean, strength is especially in a wetsuit and if you’re doing anything from an Olympic distance onwards, you’re going to need to be fairly strong through your shoulders. So there was a challenge Melbourne which was on a couple of weeks ago. I did the swim as a team and I hadn’t swum for a little while but after that swim, my latswap, I couldn’t lift my arms above my head basically. Like that was just, that was so sore. And I mean, I’d normally get that if I’m racing open water and in a wetsuit but probably more so because I wasn’t as swim fit as I’d like to be but it does take quite a bit of strength that if you’re running and riding so much

it’s normally not a consideration for a lot of triathletes. So yeah, if you can do that pull boy or band work or even like I’ve installed a chin-up bar at home and my dog is in the garage at night so it’s in the garage as well. So I’ll just go out there and just do a couple of chin-ups every morning, every night and my just strength has improved out of sight and even if you can’t do chin-ups I find just hanging off the bar that grip strength that you get through your forearms you can start to include some just some lat pull-ups or lat chin-ups where you’re just hanging from the bar lifting up through the kind of through the lats and then dropping down. That sort of strength is really good for it translates into swimming really well of founder. And actually I liked one of your tweets that you put out I think last night as well which I totally agree with and you’ll again it’ll be a debate in these different schools of thought

but focusing on the swim mat finishing the stroke right past the hip I thought was an excellent tweet because you know too many swimmers pull out of the stroke too early and I also believe that for those that have got weaknesses in their catch and pull through about the only time that they do actually get some meaningful propulsion is in that last third of the phase when the palm is actually backwards facing and if they pull out of that stroke early then they probably lose that one third of magic that was actually gonna move them forward. So I agree with that as well. I mean it’s difficult to you’ve got to be sure that the athlete doesn’t then also slow down their stroke rate because they’ve lengthened their stroke but I do believe that maintaining good stroke length in the last third of the stroke is actually pretty important as well. Yeah and especially I find especially with the exit of the stroke it’s very nuanced so there’s like for sprinters

for example a 50 meter sprinter for most of them I’d teach them to finish quite short and early because they need to get their stroke rate up and they’re still going to finish next to the hip but it’s probably gonna feel like it’s very short. So there’s nuances like that but for a good majority of the swimmers that I work with who are around that they can be anywhere from sort of 145 to 215, 220 per 100 many of them are just coming out way before the hip and they’re just so short in their strokes that they just they miss that last little bit of magic so it can be a good thing to get them to do and so I’ve been working on that a little bit with some with the swimmers who it applies to and Jesus just makes them look so much better in the water they get sometimes an extra 10, 15, 20% out of each stroke and if you’re someone who’s taking 30 strokes for a 25 meter length that can easily come down to something like low 20s

just by finishing properly if they’re coming out too short so yeah it’s and you probably find the same thing with a lot of aspects of coaching is you can’t have a blanket statement for everyone and every type of distance and event but there are a lot of common things across a range of swimmers so let’s say a lot of triathletes and age group triathletes that generally you can most of them are gonna be finishing too short so yeah, typically like the one thing I would say having coached learn to swim all the way through to elite triathlon swimmers is there are some basic flaws in swimming that pretty much apply to everyone oh yeah, yep, absolutely as you well know yeah, yep, exactly right so and I think that’s why so the things that I like to cover in the clinic and it doesn’t matter what level you are these are still I find really good things to or a good way to approach it is so number one will normally work with

just body position and balance and because that can often just get the drag element of it right? Yeah, that’s if you’re dropping down and your feet are sinking that’s just going to make things you’re not gonna overcome that you’re working harder than you need to so number one if you can get that right then I like to sort of build in a little bit of rotation finding the right amount of rotation for people and just getting that element of rocking side to side and finding that balance and then you start to sort of look into the the breathing, the recovery and then ultimately the catch and pull but just going step by step through that and normally when I’m working with someone it will go through that progression so let’s say they’re they haven’t got that first aspect right like balance or they’re kicking too big, whatever it might be if they haven’t got that right I won’t normally go to the next step so it’s just like go through it step by step

tick those boxes and build it up from there because it’s like trying to to ride a bike but if you’ve only got one one wheel there you’re going to be able to get very fast so just having that sort of approach I find is very useful and adult swimmers have always who have taught themselves to swim have just jumped in and thrown all the wood on the fire they haven’t learnt the individual elements of firstly how the body lies in the water before you even add the rotation and stroke to it they’ll view a swimmer who’s swimming in the lane beside them and go well you kick like this you stroke like this and you sort of breathe like this well right I’ll try that all at once and those habits are so hard to break if they develop a relatively proficient stroke but they’ll be so limited with what their top end performance is technically because they have to actually go back to the drawing board at times and not just make a tweak to their existing stroke

but actually relearn one of the fundamental skill sets first and foremost and actually teach themselves a completely different stroke yeah that’s right and one thing that I get occasionally is I’ll have someone who I’ve been working with and they might be a tweet or a post from a good athlete or a good coach and it’ll be like these are the three things I focus on for swimming and nothing else matters and then they’ll go this person said this and I’m working on this and you’ve got to yeah so it’s just neck and stick exactly you’ve got to give it give it at least six weeks to practice but more often than not it’s going to take longer but yeah just like that constant chopping and changing from different things you’re focusing on or just seeing someone do something in the lane next to you and you go I’m going to try that the thing I get because I make a lot of videos and put them on YouTube normally talk about one or two different aspects

and the one downside to that is people will look at that and go that’s really important I’m going to do that next session but it may not apply to them they might be doing that fine or it might just be a non-issue for them so that’s the only downside to that kind of thing I guess we have that with the podcast as well we’ll talk about different things and people will go I’m going to try this I’m going to try that but be relevant for them yeah totally the thing about swimming is that it’s like Chinese water torture really it’s micro changes embedded over thousands and thousands of repetitions before it’ll actually feel natural whereas a lot of adults think that they’ll come along to me for a swimming lesson and think basically it’ll tell me one or two things to do I’ll nail it straight away and then all of a sudden I’ll be brilliant not realising that the motor patterns that they’ve already built up have taken a long time to do that

and the motor patterns that need to be the new motor patterns won’t just happen in one session you’ll see someone and you’ll give them some advice about a different way to recover their arm or how to position their hand at the front of the catch and you’ll see them swim a length and they get it right twice and they get it wrong 28 times and then in two weeks later they’ve got it right six times and they’re getting it wrong and so it’s a matter of as I’ve always said elite swimmers and even like yourself I don’t know if you’ll agree with this or not you probably don’t even remember how you got taught to swim because you’ve probably spent so many years in the pool that the micro skills that you nailed as a kid happened over months and months and years and years of being coached every single session by someone overlooking your squad whereas adult swimmers don’t even get that foundation training that you would have got as a competitive swimmer

back in the day so sometimes I find and I’m not talking about you I’m talking about other competitive swimmers when someone asks an ex-competitive pool swimmer about how to do technique or one aspect of the technique they find it hard to actually answer because they don’t realize that they can’t tell you what the foundations were they only know what they are as the finished product because it took so many years to get to that particular point they’ve almost forgotten what they got taught absolutely I’m guilty of that when I first started coaching you know I’d have the way I’d be teaching someone to get better would be teaching kind of that longer, smoother typical swimmer stroke which may not be best for that person but I found it very hard to articulate much of it and if they didn’t get it straight away you’d be like come on, just do it exactly this is easy just do it like this and that’s perfectly illustrated my point it’s like

you’ve forgotten how much it took for you to get here but then you think once you got there this is really actually pretty easy and then you’re like well why can’t you do it and then you realize yeah they’ve only been swimming for three months and I swam for 15 years or something like that I’ve just started getting I’ve had three tennis lessons in the last two months so I’ve just started playing some fast four tennis here at home and so these lessons it’s just it’s very very basic it’s like alright how do I hold the racket what’s the seriously it’s like there’s different forehand backhand it’s a different hand position you’ve got to kind of turn the racket I didn’t know that it’s probably one of the most fundamental things but I just had no knowledge of it because I’ve never been taught it’s the same thing with swimming these things that we probably go obviously you know this this is swimming 0001 like this is just the basics

but unless you’ve been taught it you just don’t know so I’ve actually found that really helpful going through these tennis lessons learning something from scratch and and like we were saying I had a lesson yesterday and we’re practicing forehands and backhands and probably one in one in ten shots I’d hit it really nicely and the rest I wouldn’t and one of the things I was doing was just trying to go for a break every shot I was just trying to hit a win every time late into it yeah yeah and the coach is just just relaxing it’s about what is it like not really like like when you’re rallying with someone yeah it’s like just you’re not going for the winner every time all I want you to do is just get it in get it over and get it in the right spot and but even still like I just I’d only remember that occasionally and it’s I see exactly the same thing when I’m coaching so it gives me a little bit of not sympathy but it’s kind of like I can really relate

to the swimmers in the water now because I get it that’s a perfect analogy that’s absolutely perfect like now you’ve stepped out of what your area of expertise is into one that you’re in a novice or a beginner status and realized exactly that and that you can take that knowledge as a coach which I think is fantastic back into your pursuit your professional you know area and go yeah that’s reminded me you know I got to this particular point through millions of hours and millions of lengths this person’s not going to get there that fast as well and then you can be more considered in how you deliver the message that’s that’s a big change I’ve made read in the last couple of years is like I said when I first started coaching it’s just like why can’t you do this thing straight away and just and continue to do it get older you get a little bit wiser and it’s like well all right so you’re going to have to commit at least six to 12 months

to really make a good change with with your strike so like when people we do a lot of online coaching and video analysis and when people are looking at joining one of the questions I ask them is are you willing to commit long term so you’re willing to give it at least six to 12 months or are you looking for something that’s going to revolutionize just for an event that’s happening in in two weeks because that’s that’s not going to happen so yeah yeah and I guess just finding the people who are willing to to make that commitment because they’re going to go through a lot of frustration and a lot of discomfort they’re going to feel very awkward they might even take a step back sometimes yep which is absolutely absolutely normal and like I did someone email me this was last year sometime and I did a clinic on Sunday he emailed me on Monday or Tuesday and he’s like I did it I practice those things I did a time trial at the end of the session

like I was 200 or 400 time trial and my time was like 10 seconds slower like I’m I’m devastated like oh my god but alright so I’m kind of I take responsibility for not explaining what to expect that that’s on me so after that I’ve started to change how I I guess frame it and the way I’d like them to approach it so I kind of bring that up at the start of a clinic now is you have to be willing to yet to obviously go through that those phases to to change it so just to set the expectation because yeah that’s that’s on me it’s obviously gave me the wrong idea of how long it would take to change and and and also I think where someone is concerned is and again you know those people who come for a lesson or come for some technical instruction are unprepared to believe that they can have to take a couple of steps back like I say there is sometimes they may be performing a particular skill that has to be relearned completely differently

because I’ve just thrown as I say all the wood on the fire and in learning relearning that skill they actually become less efficient for a period of time until the skill becomes second nature and they can do it without it becoming too mechanical or too forced and then the fluency of stroke returns but they’ve improved a particular aspect of it so you know it’s at times two steps forward one step back or sometimes two steps back one step forward so swimming is yeah it’s it’s a cruel mistress swimming it is but that’s what makes it so enjoyable sometimes yeah once you once you get to the other end it’s yeah it’s all worth it so yeah absolutely yeah I appreciate you being on the podcast again I’ve really enjoyed chatting and we’ve got a lot of I guess mutual friends and friends and yeah people who I guess have worked with you and I’ve worked with and yeah it’s always good to catch up and just see what you’re up to and no problems

for people who want to get in touch with you or see what sort of I know you got a few camps coming up do you want to share a few of those details yeah if anyone’s interested in the intermittent fasting that I’ve been under I will be releasing some video blogs recounting the experiences and the background as to why I’ve done it and that will be on our newsletter so they can go to our website which is www.fitter.co.nz www.fitter.co.nz and we have our Fitter Radio podcast that they can find there as well and we’ve just about to they are interested in coming along to some inclusive sort of training camps that we’ll be running hosted by myself and Tim Brazier our other coach our nutritionist Mickey Willidan we’re hoping to have a few more experts along to those camps and a whole host of the professional athletes that I coach they can follow us or send us an email or look to our Facebook page or website and they will be run in NUSA

towards the end of July and August and they’ll cater for basically everyone so they can inquire to those if they like as well excellent thanks again for being on the podcast and yeah let me know when this if it ever does you might be there in August I’ll be with you I’ll be at racing weight don’t you worry yeah cheers Brendan 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