Effortless Swimming

What could I mean by the fake catch? I have spoken a little bit about this in our online coahing program this week as well. Quite a few swimmers enter at an angle like that rather than keeping their hand flat there. The reason why some swimmers do it is because entering like that means that […]

Bobby McGee has 31 years of coaching experience. He started intensely coaching triathletes in 2002. He has coached the Olympic champion in Atlanta in a marathon. He also coached some age group race walkers, some amateur race walkers to world titles and...

Bobby McGee has 31 years of coaching experience. He started intensely coaching triathletes in 2002. He has coached the Olympic champion in Atlanta in a marathon. He also coached some age group race walkers, some amateur race walkers to world titles and then the last decade has been full on with the triathletes. Watch some […]

If we look at the freestyle catch one of the biggest mistakes swimmers often make is that they will enter and extend forward and lock their elbow out for longer than they need to. What that often causes them to do is push down on the water and then pull through. They are only catching the back end of their stroke. Instead what we are looking to do is enter, extend, you can lock your elbow out for short period of time but you want to pretty quickly get into a high elbow catch. I quite often hear coaches talk about it but I haven’t heard it explained well in terms of what you do to get into the high elbow catch. One of the ways to get into it, is enter, extend and then your elbow can be locked out for short period of time but you want to relax your hand and your arm out the front so that you are pushing your elbow up and your elbow is higher than your wrist and your wrist is higher than your hand. Right now, put your hand out in front of you and lock out your elbow. Now I want you to make the change of relaxing your arm and lifting that elbow up a bit. What that is going to do is going to help you get into the high elbow catch earlier and get a better pull from your freestyle. In Swimprove we have been working pretty closely with a lot of our swimmers to help them improve their technique with some pretty specific drills. If you are finding that this is one of the things that you might be doing then I suggest that you practice sculling a bit more. Sculling out the front, practicing keeping your elbows high and keeping your wrist higher than your fingers. It is a really good way to practice that high elbow catch and position out the front that we were just talking about. In most sessions with my squad I will practice sculling somewhere in the warm up just because it is really good for activating that front end part of your stroke. That’s it for swimming news this week, I will see you next week.

If we look at the freestyle catch one of the biggest mistakes swimmers often make is that they will enter and extend forward and lock their elbow out for longer than they need to. What that often causes them to do is push down on the water and then pull through. They are only catching […]

Jeff Booher is a triathlon coach who specialises in custom designed training programs. He works with all levels of triathletes from age groupers to professionals. He also leads a coaching team of 15 Tridot certified coaches who work with hundreds of athletes all over the world. ---- Free offer for Effortless Swimming listeners ---- In an effort to further improve its patents-pending triathlon training system, TriDot is conducting a "TriDot Free for Feedback Program" available to Effortless Swimming athletes who qualify. For program qualification criteria and details, please visit the URL below: http://tridot.com/effortlessswimming TriDot will be accepting fewer than 200 athletes who meet the requirements…on a first-come basis ------------------------------------------------------------- Brenton Ford:    Welcome to another episode of the Effortless Swimming podcast. Today’s guest is Jeff Booher from Tridot. This is the episode about smarter training programs. Jeff is a triathlon coach who specialises in custom designed training programs and he works with all levels of triathletes from age groupers to professionals. He leads a coaching team of 15 Tridot certified coaches who work with hundreds of athletes all over the world. Welcome to the podcast Jeff. Jeff Booher:     Thank you very much Brent. It is great to be here. Brenton Ford:    Thanks for coming on. Let’s get straight into it and if you could just give me a quick background into what Tridot is and how it came to be. Jeff Booher:    Sure. That is a great way to start. I think a lot of the things I will chat about a little later are from a different perspective than most people that are listening have come from before.  I would like to say that I was a world champion triathlete or world renowned coach and came up with this great idea. Actually I was just a young dad, wife three kids and I wanted to excel at the sport. I didn’t want to do that at the expense of my career and my family for the rest of my life. Very early on I got into the sport or triathlon and wanted to do the best that I could and wanted to do. I realised that I needed to learn more, it didn’t want to get injured I had so many friends that were getting injured; training budding who were so consumed with the sport that they were getting divorced and all this crazy stuff was taking its toll.  I literally went out and just devourer every training resource I could find. I was reading the books, webinars everything that I could find. I actually got certified in the US, a UST certified coach and got multiple levels there and cycling certification. I had no intention even at that time of coaching anyone else, I was just purely selfish and wanted to learn and do the best job that I could. Quickly I became frustrated with the chaos that was out there. There was so much conflicting and bias; one expert would say one thing, one expert would say something totally differently it didn’t make sense. They had a bunch of theories and principals and philosophies everyone had a different one; yet they were all expert but they did not all agree. Basically it got down to the point where I found two categories of training solutions out there. There was the cookie cutter approach the one size fits all; you might have a beginner, intermediate and an advanced plan. You would buy it; there is no athlete data considered in developing those plans. Then there are some other ones that I call guess work, I now call guess work plans. They have a lot of data done by an expert highly educated coach but that coach doesn’t have a lot of data/a lot of athletes. They are working with a handful of athletes all of the athletes are different. I thought this is just impossible to draw conclusions with 20, 30, 40 athletes and each one being different. I noticed that none of them were using and kind of repeatable methodology or process; they weren’t measuring things.

Jeff Booher is a triathlon coach who specialises in custom designed training programs. He works with all levels of triathletes from age groupers to professionals. He also leads a coaching team of 15 Tridot certified coaches who work with hundreds of athletes all over the world. —- Free offer for Effortless Swimming listeners —- In […]

Jeff Booher is a triathlon coach who specialises in custom designed training programs. He works with all levels of triathletes from age groupers to professionals. He also leads a coaching team of 15 Tridot certified coaches who work with hundreds of athletes all over the world. —- Free offer for Effortless Swimming listeners —- In […]

If you look at the top swimmers, Olympians or the swimmers of really good ability - they look like fish in the water. It looks like the water is their second home. Compare that to someone who is brand new, they'll usually be tense, nervous and they're fighting the water. So, how do you get from being tense and nervous to feeling like the water is your second home? Well, it comes down to three things. It comes down to doing the right things. So usually with the brand new swimmer, one of the first things you'll do is you start kicking on your back. So you might have an instructor to help you but you'll be kicking on your back just getting used to relaxing in the water. And that leads into our second thing is being able to relax in the water so you can breathe comfortably and you don't feel like you're going to swallow water. And if you can relax more in the water, then you typically float better. The way to swim faster is to stay relaxed as you get faster. If you're tense and you're fighting the water to try and go faster, then you'll just burn more energy and you won't be able to swim faster by fighting the water. So it's like in The Mastering Freestyle Program, some of the very first few drills that we do, they're very basic. They're very simple. They're kicking on the back. They're kicking on the side and introducing some rotation. But the reason that we start with such basic drills is that helps you become more relaxed and comfortable in the water. The last thing is experience. There's no shortcut to getting experienced in the water. You have to be in the pool two, three, four times a week or more. You have to be in the pool practicing these things and training because there's no way that you can possibly get the experience without putting in the yards. So if you're looking to feel more comfortable in the water, then look at doing the right things. Like doing the right drills starting with the basic drills like we've got in The Mastering Freestyle Program. The 2nd thing is to learn to relax. Learn to breath so that you're comfortable. And last thing is getting the experience. So in taking the time in the pool doing the sessions every week and making sure that you're in the water every single week doing 2, 3, 4 more sessions a week so that you can get the experience. Your body can make those connections with its nervous system in order to swim faster and learn how to swim better. That's it for swimming news this week, I'll see you next week.

If you look at the top swimmers, Olympians or the swimmers of really good ability – they look like fish in the water. It looks like the water is their second home. Compare that to someone who is brand new, they’ll usually be tense, nervous and they’re fighting the water. So, how do you get […]

If you followed our videos in the last few weeks you will know there is more than one way to swim freestyle. If you look at Ian Thorpe versus Michael Phelps they both have very different techniques but they are both very fast swimmers. If you look at swimmers in a certain race they will even adjust their stroke to suit how they are feeling. An Example Of This For example in the 100m freestyle at the London Olympics Nathan Adrian won the event by 0.01 of a second. You can see in the video that he adjusts his stroke in the last 15 metres. He goes from swimming with not too much rotation and is keeping his stroke very balanced in terms of his shoulder rotation. He adjusts it to include a bit more body roll and a bit more hip rotation. He is really using his whole body to drive himself forward. I believe this is why he actually won the race because he was able to adjust his stroke so he could maximise or get the most out of himself in the last 15m. When he was tired, fatigued and hurting he used the muscles that he hadn’t used previously in the race in order to finish off strong and win the event. Watch from 3:49. He makes the change at 4:00. The same goes for your own swimming. You can adjust your technique and stroke to suit the distance and the race that you are swimming. For example if you are training for 50m freestyle your stroke is going to be a lot different than if you are training for 100m freestyle. Yet, you can still adjust your stroke for when you need it to suit those different races. Personalised Feedback In Swimprove which is our online coaching community where you get access to all of our videos, video analysis and feedback and tips. When I am doing video analysis we take into account what event you are actually training for. If you are training for a 1500m then you are going to need different feedback and advice than if you were training for a 50m freestyle. I was doing a one on one lesson with a swimmer who is training for an event that is about 750m in the open water; for a sprint triathlon. He is a very good sprinter he is very strong and his stroke is well suited to being a sprinter. The change that we are looking to make is longer distance races just to change his technique a bit. He is using a little bit more hip drive and he is slowing down his stroke rate just a touch in order to be more effective and a bit more efficient over the longer distance. When you are getting feedback whether that is in our Swimprove coaching community, a coach or a fellow swimmer just make sure they know what events you are actually training for. Feedback and your video analysis will differ depending on what event you are training for. That’s it for swim news this week, see you next week.

If you followed our videos in the last few weeks you will know there is more than one way to swim freestyle. If you look at Ian Thorpe versus Michael Phelps they both have very different techniques but they are both very fast swimmers. If you look at swimmers in a certain race they will […]

If you followed our videos in the last few weeks you will know there is more than one way to swim freestyle. If you look at Ian Thorpe versus Michael Phelps they both have very different techniques but they are both very fast swimmers. If you look at swimmers in a certain race they will […]

Gary Barclay of TheSwimmingExpert.com is the author of Swimming for Parents - a book about how to best support your child in swimming. In this episode of The Effortless Swimming podcast Gary will talk about how to raise a champion swimmer. Brenton F...

Gary Barclay of TheSwimmingExpert.com is the author of Swimming for Parents – a book about how to best support your child in swimming. In this episode of The Effortless Swimming podcast Gary will talk about how to raise a champion swimmer. Brenton Ford:    Welcome to another episode of the Effortless Swimming podcast. Today’s guest is […]