Episode 134 - Sink or Swim: Game-Changing Tips to Unlock Your Swimming Potential

Sink or Swim: Game Changing Tips To Unlock Your Swimming Potential

Dive into the world of swimming mastery with our expert, Brenton Ford from Effortless Swimming.

In this episode, Brenton spills the beans on common mistakes he sees triathletes make with their technique, and how you can avoid them to swim faster, easier and injury-free.

He gives some really practical strategies to enhance your shoulder mobility and range of motion before swimming, ensuring your elbow position is optimised, allowing you to glide through the water with precision. 

Brenton also shares the types of training environments that lead to swim success and specific cues that he's been using with his swimmers that have made a world of difference in their technique. 

Plus, learn the best and easiest way to film yourself swimming for easy, effective analysis to fine-tune your stroke.

Whether you're a seasoned swimmer or just dipping your toes into the water (pun intended!), this episode is a must listen!

Links:

Download the Freestyle Technique Blueprint

Connect with Brenton: Instagram YouTube  Podcast Website

Check how well you’re doing when it comes to your nutrition with our 50 Step Checklist to Triathlon Nutrition Mastery

Start working on your nutrition now with my Triathlon Nutrition Kickstart course 

It’s for you if you’re a triathlete and you feel like you’ve got your training under control and you’re ready to layer in your nutrition. It's your warmup on the path to becoming a SUPERCHARGED triathlete – woohoo!

Connect with me: 

To learn more about the Triathlon Nutrition Academy, head HERE | dietitianapproved.com/academy

See behind-the-scenes action on Instagram: @dietitian.approved

Follow along on Facebook: @DietitianApproved

Join our FREE Dietitian Approved Crew Facebook group

Enjoying the podcast?

Let me know what you loved about it and what you learnt by tagging me @dietitian.approved on Instagram!

Episode Transcription

Episode 134: Sink or Swim: Game-Changing Tips to Unlock Your Swimming Potential

Welcome to the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. The show designed to serve you up evidence-based sports nutrition advice from the experts. Hi, I'm your host Taryn, Accredited Practicing Dietitian, Advanced Sports Dietitian and founder of Dietitian Approved. Listen as I break down the latest evidence to give you practical, easy-to-digest strategies to train hard, recover faster and perform at your best. You have so much potential, and I want to help you unlock that with the power of nutrition. Let's get into it.

[00:00:00] Taryn: Joining me back on the podcast this week, I have Brenton Ford from Effortless Swimming, who is a return repeat offender. He was here. Wow, a year ago, maybe episode 81 it was, and we talked about how to become a faster, more efficient swimmer. And so I really wanted to get him back on to pick his brain and share his knowledge about swimming to help make you faster and better in the water.

So thanks for coming back, Brenton. 

[00:01:06] Brenton: Hey, thanks for having me, Taren. It's a pleasure to be back on. you've been on my podcast twice, so it's nice to be able to return the favor.

[00:01:14] Taryn: Yeah, that's right.

[00:01:15] Brenton: Yeah. Call it even.

[00:01:18] Taryn: So one of the things that I wanted to get your thoughts on is All the sort of mistakes and errors that you see triathletes making in the pool at the moment, like there's often

trends with nutrition, there's things that, blow up and things that disappear, you know, at the moment, things like continuous glucose monitoring, uh, getting a red hot go, but what sort of things are you seeing a lot of at the moment with triathletes in the water? Wow. 

[00:01:43] Brenton: It's interesting that you mentioned. Trends and phases and things like that. I'm seeing quite a few athletes that are trying to swim a certain way that can really make them slower. because it's sold as , extremely efficient, , and we'll. , you won't get injured and all this sort of stuff, but it's a very small section of the population that's, that it's going to be suited for, , it can look really good and it can be quite efficient, but it, for most people, it's going to limit their ability to swim fast.

It's going to maybe get them 80 percent of the way there, but it's not going to help them achieve their full potential as a swimmer or as a triathlete in the water. So I see people. over rotating, thinking that they need to get to 90 degrees rotation side to side. If you look at any elite swimmers or any good triathlon swimmers, they're not rotating to 90 degrees.

So when you look at elite swimmers or good uh, , triathletes, it's 30 to 40 degrees through the hips and through the shoulders. It's within that sort of range. So people will often go. And lose balance if you go too far on the side. And it also takes a lot longer to get back to the other side.

So when you're in the open water and it's choppy, you often need to have a slightly faster stroke rate because you'll become a victim to the chop and the waves. if you're over rotating, then it can really just limit your stroke rate. So, the way I think of that, it should be like you're rocking side to side instead of rolling, and I'll credit Carlin Pipes for that, difference there.

That's a really good way of thinking about it. So like a boat rocking in the harbour, rather than out to sea and just rolling side to side. And that will give you much more stability, much better balance. And it's going to also just help you have a better catch in many cases, because if you're rolling to 90 degrees, it puts your shoulder in this position where it can really put a lot of strain on your rotator cuff if you're going for a good catch at 90 degrees rotation.

So it just leads to all these things that. Are actually going to make you slower and can actually lead to injuries. So that's one key thing is over, over rotation. 

[00:03:47] Taryn: over rotation. 

[00:03:55] Brenton: And I've seen like Instagram, Tik Tok, these sorts of things. Like you just see, people teaching certain ways to swim in. There's validity, in some cases to it, depending on what your goals are and who you are. But for the majority of people, it's just not going , to help them.

So I say it quite a bit, because I have people come in for our clinics and they do the underwater filming, or they'll send me videos online and I'll say, you know, I'm like, I know exactly what you're trying to do. Try this instead. and this is what I can see working, working for you.

That's going to be a lot, better, and it's going to be a lot. a lot easier as well. another one that I'd say is exaggerating things that they hear that are correct in, in many ways, but overdoing them. So a couple of examples of that would be say a high elbow recovery. And when we think of a high elbow recovery, we basically want to make sure that the arm's not too low to the water.

We want to lead the recovery more with the elbow than the hand. But sometimes that gets misinterpreted as , either coming over really high with the arm or having the elbow really high in the air and your hand close to your body. So it's this very cramped and restrictive recovery there. So just taking good coaching points or good coaching cues, but just taking them either to the extreme or misinterpreting them.

So high elbow recovery is one. If you're a triathlete, you probably need to have what I'd call an open recovery, which is where you're a little bit wider. , hand can come over a bit higher, but we don't want to be really close and jammed up and close to the body because if you're in the open water doing that, you're probably just going to hit the waves and in a wetsuit, , it's too hard to do that without blowing your shoulders up.

So that's a big one. Same with the high elbow catch. So in our videos, we talk a lot about the high elbow catch and it's an important position to get is a good catch. But when people try and overdo it, they let their shoulder sort of roll forwards. And it can really compromise their strength and their, their power in the water.

So they're trying to overdo that high elbow catch. And you'll see a lot of really good swimmers. They've got a nice catch position, but it's not over the top. It's not this. Ian Thorpe or Grant Hackett and I'm probably showing my age here for anyone who's in their 20s. But, it's not this Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett sort of 90 degree catch. It's just, you don't need to do that as a triathlete. I doubt you've got the range of motion to be able to hold that and do that comfortably. So we don't need to overdo that either. Now, granted, there's people who have just do the complete opposite.

They've dropped their elbow. There's nothing resembling a catch there as well. But I do see this, exaggeration of, of things happening. I think of it like the three bears, you know, it's, it's often the middle one. That it's somewhere in between is where the truth lies. Not these extremes of like too much or nothing at all.

Somewhere in between is often where it lies. And it's probably the same with nutrition, right? 

[00:06:45] Taryn: Yeah, People are all or none, right? And so you just, somewhere in the middle is probably where you need to be. 

[00:06:51] Brenton: Yeah, yeah. And that's just so true with so many of the coaching points that I see, see being made. People just take it too far.

[00:06:58] Taryn: And so those are two very well known Australian swimmers for our international listeners who are like, who the hell is Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett? They're both retired now, right? 

[00:07:07] Brenton: yeah, still on the commentary circuit, I think. But definitely, definitely retired from swimming. although when you look back at dates and times, it's like it, that was probably, Sydney, 2000 was kind of where Thorpey stood out the most and that was 23 years ago.

So starting to show our age, eh? 

[00:07:24] Taryn: Let's move on, move on. So one of the questions I get asked a lot by my athletes is like stuff around swimming and warming up for the swim as they head into a race. Because often triathletes just Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC. like improve their range of motion, get their shoulders warmed up before a race.

And then also before they go and jump in and do a training session. Cause I'm really guilty of like just getting straight in the pool and

you know, the first case you warm up, but what can we do to prime our body to make sure we have a really good quality session? We're not wasting our time.

[00:08:14] Brenton: Mobility is a massive one for all adults, but I'd say for triathletes in particular, because of the time on the bike and the time running, it can really impact your range of motion through the shoulders. There's these two tests that most physios will do if they're doing a screening for a swimmer.

They'll go through these seven tests, but there's two, two key ones that are reflective of a, an ability to get a good catch. One is called the high elbow test. Now, if you're listening on audio, I'll explain it as best I can. If you're watching this, well, then you've got the advantage of the video. The high elbow test is where you can put, you put your thumbs underneath your armpits.

And then you lift your elbows up as high as you can. So you're lifting them up to the sky and you can, 

[00:08:58] Taryn: this morning. I'm feeling a bit tight. 

[00:09:01] Brenton: that's looking pretty good. So they, they measure this angle, here from your, the side of your body, kind of where your ribs are or your lats all the way up to your, to your arms.

Now you'll find, and if you're doing this now, hopefully you're not driving. If you're at about 90 degrees, so you can't get your elbows much higher than your shoulders.

If you're at 90, maybe 100, one 10. That's pretty, pretty stiff. I think the, the benchmark that they're looking for is 130. Off the top of my head. But if you're below that, then you're probably quite restricted in your ability to get a good catch. So that's the first test, the high elbow test.

The other one's called a combined lateral raise. So this is where you'd lie face down on the floor, have your chin on the ground, arms out in front of you, and you. Link your thumbs together and keep your arms straight so your elbows are locked out And then while you're keeping your chin on the ground and you're yeah at the top of your feet flat on the ground as well Lift up your arms as high as you can and see how in this direction See how far back you can get yet how far back you can get your arms and you've got to make sure you keep your elbows straight and locked out because If you bend them, it's easier to get them higher.

A lot of people can't get off the ground I've had swimmers who can't raise their their arms off the ground there, which is pretty tight The range of motion they're looking for with elite swimmers is 20 degrees. So if you think of having them straight out in front of your head where you are off the ground probably 15 centimeters, 10, 15 centimeters, that's zero degrees.

Then you've got above that as being, you know, 20. So if you can go above 20, that's what they're looking for with the elite swimmers. My rule of thumb there is if you're a triathlete, if you can get to 10 degrees or more, that's pretty good range of motion. And That's what we'd want to work towards. So those two tests are a good indication of. Where you're at with your range of motion that's relevant to your ability to get a good catch in your overhead range Yeah, so I was chatting with Tom Barton who's he's done some work with some of the Australian swimmers He's up in Brisbane And he was talking about giving exercises to triathletes and swimmers before training that will take them a couple of minutes But it can really just improve That specific range of motion before swimming.

So his favorite one, he said is , he gets his athletes to take one or two kilo dumbbells to the pool and to do 10 shoulder presses on each side. And as they , reach up with their arm, make sure their shoulder comes up to the side of their face. And they rotate a little bit through their shoulders and then they come back down.

And he says, you don't want to get to fatigue. You are just warming up those muscles and getting them going. And if you even just do 10 of those each side and then retest your high elbow

So you can test, you'll find that you probably have improved on that. So you can do that exercise. to allow you to get to a better position when you're swimming.

So if you haven't got one or two kilo dumbbells, I'd even just use a TheraBand or you can use a drink bottle. You know, if you've got a, it might weigh 750 grams if you've got a normal drink bottle. So there's other options there if you haven't got the dumbbells, but just that'll take you less than a minute.

But that might help you improve your range of motion, which will help you improve your catch, which will help you swim faster. So just doing that before each training session can make a difference. And then going on from there, if you want to just improve it over the course of two to three months, you can do some other strengthening exercises that can actually help you, improve there.

So it's not about stretching necessarily. It's about. He talked about strengthening the opposing muscles so that you can comfortably move through that range of motion. So with the shoulder press, you're strengthening the opposing muscles that you'd go through with your catch here, and that actually helps you improve your range of motion rather than just static stretching.

So they're just a couple things that you can do, which will help you long term. So I look at that shoulder range of motion and also thoracic mobility. So that thing about that side to side rotation through your spine , we tend to be pretty tight through there as well. And if you're tight through there, it's hard to kind of rotate the right amount or have control when you're rotating because often that'll cause people if they're stiff through that side to side rotation through their thoracic, then their hips often go too far and they can't just rotate that little bit more through the shoulders.

And keep that balance and stability. So thoracic rotation is a big one as well. And just, if you look up thoracic openers, there's some good stretches on YouTube, Google, they're pretty straightforward as well. So, heaps of options there, but you can really make a difference to your swimming with those, those two things.

[00:13:27] Taryn: I love that because it's something that somebody that's time poor and rushing to get to training could easily do and fit in before a session. Is it something that they should look at doing before a race as well 

[00:13:38] Brenton: Yeah, absolutely. And again, it doesn't take long. And if you can't get in the water and do a physical swim warmup, because I know that's not an option at all, all races, if you can't do that, then that would be a minimum. I would also probably get some therabands out or some cords and do some, dry land warmup too. but yeah, I'd be looking , to do that before a race as well, if, they've got that opportunity, which if you get there early enough, yeah, you can,

[00:14:01] Taryn: Well, when you're up for sort of at least three hours before race start, surely there's a minute in there somewhere that you could do a little bit of that to prime the body. 

[00:14:09] Brenton: that's right. And it'll take your mind off the race. I know with the one Ironman that I did, he was up at like three 30 or something like that. Just getting everything ready, getting the body ready. And there's a lot of time where you just waiting for the race to start, So keep yourself busy and do something that's going to help you for the race. 

[00:14:25] Taryn: Love it. So that's some really good issues that you're seeing at the moment. And last time you were on the podcast, you talked about ways to become faster and more efficient in the water. Have you got any other hot tips for us to help swimmers that are listening anywhere in the world become better, faster, more efficient swimmers?

[00:14:42] Brenton: One of the things that I've learned as a coach is using cues, which is basically.

A way to condense a whole bunch of movements or information into one

easy to remember word or phrase. And so some of the cues that I've found have worked really well with the athletes that I've been coaching. One is big underarm or large underarm.

And this kind of ties into that, the shoulder press that we were talking about. Make sure as you're going through your reach and your catch to keep a big underarm and the difference there is if you've got a small or a closed underarm there.

It's basically dropping the elbow. So with all those exercises with the shoulder press, basically helps the shoulder blades scapulas float side to side along your ribcage. They need to be able to move. And if you're stiff, then they don't move very well. So with that thought of a large underarm, next time you go to the pool and you're going through your catch, think about trying to keep this nice and open and really big through here.

And you'll find that you hold a lot more water. As you're pressing back compared to if this is small, then you're not, you haven't got as much surface area. So I've, I've been playing around with that. I've given it to some of my swimmers. I had a swimmer come to our male dives trip who I've worked with for quite a while.

For her, that made a massive difference for just helping her get a really good catch and pull on pretty much every stroke with just that thought. And yeah, I've found that with a lot of athletes. So big underarms are a good cue to think not something you generally want in life is big underarms, 

[00:16:10] Taryn: but it probably works for you for swimming. Ha ha ha!

[00:16:12] Brenton: no, but for, yeah, and you don't want to be, you don't want to be showing people that.

[00:16:15] Taryn: Yeah. Haha! Yeah. in the water, it is a great thing. So as a coach, we're always looking at your armpits, which is nice. Isn't it?

[00:16:23] Brenton: So, one following on from there is, is think about having a ladder underneath you. So when I'm working with people and we're talking about the catch, they think that they need to put their arm in the water, make this particular shape and then just pull their arm through the water.

But the better concept there is you want to. Move your hand down and set your catch position, set your arm there and just have your body move past that arm. So with the really good swimmers, if you look at where they're basically where their hand sets the catch and then where it exits, when they finish that stroke, there's not too much difference between that.

So they're not moving their hand and their arm through the water much at all. It's basically anchoring there and they're moving their body past it. So that's what we're looking to work towards. So sometimes people have the wrong idea of what they need to do there. So you want to almost anchor your arm, move your body past it.

So if you think about having this ladder underneath you, you've got the rungs of the ladder there. So every time you enter, you're reaching forwards, then you move your hand down, you place your hand on that rung of the ladder, and then you're moving your body past it. Then you do the same thing on the next stroke.

Place it down, move your body past it. So it's a good way to conceptualise. How you want to be moving through the water rather than pulling your arm through and you can tell the difference between someone who's Doing that and someone who's who's not so I found that to be quite a useful one as well because Distance per stroke as you know distance per stroke is what we've really got to work on Especially with a lot of the triathletes.

I work with initially they take too many strokes per lap So thinking of that ladder can be a helpful cue

the third one there Is, uh, think about swimming down a narrow, narrow hallway. So we've got all these, items at home. We've got the ladder, we've got the hallway.

so swimming down a narrow hallway or corridor. So when you enter and you're reaching forward, think about trying to fit your body into this, this hallway that's about 30 to 40 centimeters wide. because quite often people are just, they're too wide and they're not, not streamlined enough.

So trying to just get into that narrow hallway is the way to go. Now it doesn't mean that when you go through your catch and pull that you're not going to go outside of that hallway because. Ideally, if you're moving through the correct movements, you'll be outside of that hallway with the arms, same for your recovery, but just think about your body staying in that, hallway.

And that can just help you maintain that length in that streamline position as well. 

[00:18:38] Taryn: I'm definitely going to come to one of your Maldives camps one day. That just sounds like my ultimate holiday destination. Bit of swimming.

lots of pretty fish, good food. When are you running your next Maldives camp? 

[00:18:52] Brenton: it's Maldives, first of all, not, not Maldives 

[00:18:55] Taryn: Come on, 

mate. we're, we're, making a stroke yesterday. If you listen to the podcast that. in the Maldives, they pronounce it that way and I just cannot

[00:19:02] Brenton: change my brain to say it that way. So I'm just like, nah, I can't change. I'm stuck this way. 

[00:19:08] Taryn: stubborn 

[00:19:09] Brenton: just keep calling it the Maldives.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's it'll be in, uh, September, start of September. So got two back to back camps. I absolutely love it over there. And one of the reasons is obviously the environment, the water, everything is just, it doesn't get any better.

But what I found on camps like that is the environment that people are in can really determine whether or not they improve. So I've seen swimmers in some training environments with a squad where, That'd be six to eight people in a 25 meter lane.

[00:19:43] Taryn: Sounds like hell. 

[00:19:46] Brenton: well, the was that if you went second or third or fourth or fifth, you didn't have to do much work. 

If you're leading the lane, you had to work a bit harder, but because of chop and everyone's leaving two seconds apart, and there's a lot of wash and everything. I got, I got super fit because it was a, they're hard sessions and they worked as hard and it's good to have that squad environment.

But technically my stroke got pretty, pretty ugly to the point where I swam in a competition and a friend of mine who I respect and he's a coach and he was on the Australian team. He said, what is up with your freestyle? And I was like, Oh, shot to the heart. but it really just, it came from a combination of training in this squatting environment where my technique, it kind of developed to the point where,

yeah, like it, it was good for dealing with, with the waves and the chop and all that sort of stuff. But in the pool, it was no good, but it just, it really impacted my technique.

So I see that happening for quite a few swimmers is that like squat is great. Cause you push yourself harder and you can just. Kind of get into the zone and you often do more distance you train harder in that squat environment So I think squat is is really good But if you're in that's in a squad where it's just there's so much washing it There's no gap in between the swimmers.

There's a good chance that maybe a technique is starting to suffer as a result So what I've suggested to some of the swimmers that I'm coaching who are in that environment is just once a week See if you can do your own session where you've got calm aboard if you're not having to push too hard And you can just focus on your technique, you can do some stroke count, and you can just be more aware of what's happening there because people will also push too hard in their training sessions where, maybe it seems to be an aerobic session, but because someone's two seconds behind them, they're going too hard, they're going threshold, and they're not working the right training zones either.

So I think that environment can play a big, a big part of whether or not You're improving. the reason I think of that with the male dive strip is it's just so relaxing there that because everyone's kind of on island time, there's no stress. We're doing swimming laps of the island.

They're looking at fish. It's just they're very relaxed. And when they're relaxed, they tend to learn better. They take things on better and they can just be more attuned with how they're feeling. So, right. that's what led me down that, path of, uh, of thinking there.

[00:22:02] Taryn: Yeah, I found that swimming with triathletes too in like a triathlon swimming squad. I had to leave the lane, otherwise I'd just pull my hair out the whole time because you've got somebody that can't swim and they don't leave their two seconds and so that they can sit on your toes the whole time, but then that's not really making them a better swimmer, is it? It's making me a better swimmer, but not the people behind. 

[00:22:23] Brenton: there is an upside of, it gets you used to being able to swim on someone's feet, which, you know, maybe you get to do if you have someone your speed in 

[00:22:30] Taryn: if you're on my feet, I'm out of there. Like get away from me No free rides. 

[00:22:35] Brenton: I'm the same as you. I love to lead the lane. I hate going second or third. And if I do go second or third, I'll I'll leave five seconds, 10 if I can, cause I just Like that, that clear water. And it's a better reflection of your actual time and your, and your pace. So, that's a very much a swimmer's mentality, isn't it? It's just like, no, give me my space, leave me alone. You know, I just want. Flatwater. Yeah.

[00:22:57] Taryn: So for a triathlete then, that does swim in open water, like I love the idea of going to do a session by yourself So you can concentrate and work on your technique and improve. But is that style of swimming, like a really busy lane, going to be beneficial for a triathlete that does swim open water? Because, you know, pool swimming is so different to open water swimming. Mm. 

[00:23:17] Brenton: think it's good to have, both. And if you only swim by yourself and you don't have that opportunity to practice, swimming closer to someone or practice swimming in groups or packs, then you're probably missing out as well. So I think you want to try and , balance the two, but I find it's very hard for people to Work on aspects like their catch or even like their entry and alignment when they're swimming so closely to people.

You just don't have that ability to just slow things down, do some drills and that kind of thing. So it's good to balance both if you can.

[00:23:48] Taryn: love it. So one of the things that you're really good at is looking at somebody's swim technique and giving them feedback and little pointers and cues and

like big underarms like you talked about before. What is the best way for somebody to actually capture that and film themselves so that they could get some good feedback and even just some visual feedback for themselves to see what they look like under the water?

[00:24:08] Brenton: It's such an important thing to know exactly what you're doing. Otherwise, you're just shooting in the dark.

And, I've had swimmers come to clinics and say, I've been working on. This aspect of my stroke and we'll film them and like, Oh, that you don't need to worry about that. Like this is what you need to focus on.

So when they actually get some footage, then you can be so much more specific with what you're doing now. I know not everyone's got a GoPro, so even just using a phone above the water, film the front and side that can show you quite a bit of what's going on there. So everyone's got a phone.

You can normally just get a. Friend or maybe someone at the pool just to film you for five seconds or even if at some pools Yeah, you might be able to just set up your phone next to a block and just film yourself swimming in if you if you're not going with someone and look some pools are pretty tight about it about the rules there So it depends on where you are, but in most cases you can kind of be a bit Sneaky with it and just capture some footage for 10 seconds.

Um, I mean, people are taking their Instagram stories and all that sort of stuff anyway, so you can get away with being filmed for 10 seconds in most cases. So, , it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. I think with with that. I know some pools in the UK where they don't allow fins.

They don't allow a snorkel because it's just too dangerous. Uh, so some. We're pretty, we're fairly relaxed at least here, but, um, ideally you want to try and get some underwater footage. Now you can still do that with the phone. I wouldn't recommend using your iPhone, even though they're waterproof. I know too many people who have lost their phone to, uh, So you can get like a 15, 20 waterproof little case or um, like a satchel that you can put your phone in and record and that, that quality is pretty good.

So you can just rest your phone up against the side of the pool. Or, yeah, on the side or at the end and record yourself swimming that way. Now, ideally, we want to try and get something like a GoPro. And you can get a second hand GoPro from Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, Gumtree, wherever you're listening from, for usually about 150 to 200.

It doesn't have to be the latest GoPro. Anything in the last Six, seven years will be totally fine. , we use this thing called a, a go pole. It's like a telescopic extendable pole where we'll follow the swimmer along with, uh, you know, along in the water. So if you've got that opportunity, then that's great.

But otherwise we just get people to get this tripod that's got bendable legs. So it's called a Gorillapod. That's just one version of it. And you can attach your GoPro to that. You can just either sit this little tripod on the bottom of the pool and angle it up towards you. Or you can even just wrap it around a lane rope, wrap around a ladder, , handrail and just angle it towards you.

So there's lots of options there. So that's how most of the people that I work with, one to one, who I do stroke analysis with, they record themselves using one of these gorilla pods with a GoPro, and it's very easy to capture the footage that way. So. usually no reason why you can't get some sort of footage of your stroke.

And then even if you haven't got a coach to look at it, you can generally see a couple of things. And I've got this PDF that basically lists, this is the order to go through things in. So, I'll provide the link there for your, for your audience where they can just download this, um, one page PDF. And it's got the order of, this is how you should check through your stroke.

If you haven't got a coach to it, to work. Through it with and that will help you identify where some some opportunities are.

[00:27:31] Taryn: Thank you. I'll definitely put that link in the show notes so that people can go and grab it because we have listeners all over the world. But you do things like Feedback Friday every Friday, uh, and your Effortless Swimming members do have the opportunity to send you videos all the time and get that feedback whenever they want, really just like on tap. On tap swimming analysis. 

[00:27:51] Brenton: at how many I've done in the last couple of years and in the last two years. I've done three or four thousand videos of just the people I work one on one with and then I do Like 30. Yeah, 30 a month with our members and then we've got all of our clinics too So it's probably getting to the point where it's 10 to 12, 000 now, I think.

So I've seen it all. It doesn't matter how you swim. Um, people often go, Oh, I'm a bit embarrassed about how I swim. I've seen it all. Um, it's like being a doctor, right? There's nothing you haven't seen. There's no need to be embarrassed.

[00:28:20] Taryn: Same as nutrition. Like, I've seen all those mistakes. I don't care what you're eating. I don't care if you have a block of chocolate for dinner. Just tell me. I can't help you unless you tell me. 

[00:28:28] Brenton: Yeah. Yeah. So, so true. Right. 

[00:28:30] Taryn: Okay, great. So above water, if that's all you can get front and side, and then if you can get it, it's really valuable to get some underwater stuff as well in whatever method you have and send it to Brenton, who has seen it all and you can see it's like, um, you've really perfected that craft of like knowing really quickly what's wrong with somebody's technique.

Same with me with nutrition. I can look at somebody's week and go, there's the hole there, or this is the hole, or this is the reason that you feel like this four days later, it's. the same with swimming technique. You can see five seconds of footage and you go, this is your problem, this is how we fix it.

[00:29:05] Brenton: Yeah. And it's just becoming really dialed, dialed into that, having seen so many different, different things. And I forget what it was like at the start, like when I'm training coaches on this stuff,

I've got to remember, all right, this is the, I've really struggled with it in the, in the beginning, but then as you, you do more, you work with more people, you see what affects.

those things that they work on, have, you really start to get this, innate ability to see it. And, uh, yeah, that's what I've worked on for the last probably 12 years. I think we've really done a lot of video and, uh, I'd like to think I'm, I'm pretty good at it having done that much work.

And then. Just freestyle. Really working with triathletes and adults. That's, that's my specialty. That's, that's my sweet spot. And that's what I really enjoy doing because you can just make such big gains with athletes like that. and they're really appreciative of it too, which I enjoy. 

[00:29:54] Taryn: I'm going to get you to do mine one day. 

[00:29:56] Brenton: I'll be, and, and just, just tell me if you want me to be nice to be really just to go hard. Brutally honest. All 

[00:30:02] Taryn: I'm really direct and so I like to be, you know, giving that feedback directly. No fluff. We don't do fluff here. 

[00:30:08] Brenton: Yeah. All right. Prepare yourself.

[00:30:11] Taryn: Sounds good. So if people do want to work with you and, and improve their swimming and technique or send you videos for some feedback how do they find you and how do they go about doing that? 

[00:30:20] Brenton: Yeah. So, uh, effortless swimming. com is our website. that's where you can just see where our clinics are, our camps are,

and we've got some online courses as well. And the membership, otherwise check us out on either YouTube or Instagram. That's where most people tend to watch a lot of our content. So I've got heaps of content that we put out there that will help you learn about what you need to do to get faster.

So either through YouTube or Instagram are probably the main two. 

[00:30:45] Taryn: I'll drop those links in the show notes so that people can find you and if you have listened to this only,

I definitely recommend going back and YouTube channel as well because there's some good, there's some good arm movements going on from both of us.

[00:30:58] Brenton: Awesome. 

[00:30:59] Taryn: Well, thank you so much and yeah, we'll get you back on soon. 

[00:31:03] Brenton: Sounds great. Thanks very much. 

 

Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Triathlon Nutrition Academy podcast. I would love to hear from you. If you have any questions or want to share with me what you've learned, email me at [email protected]. You can also spread the word by leaving me a review and taking a screenshot of you listening to the show. Don't forget to tag me on social media, @dietitian.approved, so I can give you a shout out, too. If you want to learn more about what we do, head to dietitianapproved.com. And if you want to learn more about the Triathlon Nutrition Academy program, head to dietitianapproved.com/academy. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to helping you smashed in the fourth leg - nutrition!