20-Second Drop_ Watch This Triathlete's Insane Swim Improvement!

Hi, Brenton here from Effortless Swimming. In this video, I wanna show you three changes that a swimmer who attended one of our clinics made to help him go from 205 per 100 down to a 145 per 100 average. And that's his aerobic threshold. And he's now swimming 31 and a half minutes for a half Ironman swim, whereas prior to that, he was more around the 34 and a half minutes. So a three minute drop in his half Ironman swim in a couple months time, which is a good result. Now, the three changes that he worked on here, number one was head position. Now you'll see with his head position in this top video, he was looking a long way forwards outside of that zero to 45 range that I like most swimmers to stick to. And you'll see just in this below shot, he's looking there within range, which is really good. That's where we want him to be. And it's improved his body position a little bit as well. So his hips are sitting just slightly higher, heels are breaking the surface. It also is reflected in this above water shot where you'll see here that his head is quite high. His ears are just near the surface of the water, whereas here his ears are underneath the surface of the water. So he's still got the top of his head above, which is what we want, but he's got it that little bit deeper. You'll also notice his breathing position's better. He's looking to the side. His head's a bit more in line with his body compared to previously. The head's up a bit higher there as well. So that head position change was nice. Might still be able to improve it a little bit, but he wouldn't have to change it much from where it currently is. The second thing for him was the timing of his stroke. He was really dropping the arm when he was taking a breath. So I really like this comparison here. If you look at the above water shot, his right arm, as he goes through this, you'll notice right there he's not in the front quadrant. So there's nothing in front of his head at that point. Now if we just bring it back slightly, you'll see here that he's always got something in front of his head in this below shot there. So his arm is always in front. So he's just keeping that right arm reaching forwards for a little bit longer now to keep him in that front quadrant, which has just improved his overall timing in the stroke. So with most swimmers that I work with, we want them to always have something in front of their head. So for him, that just meant keeping the arm, particularly on his breathing side, just reaching forwards for that fraction longer. So much, much better timing and balance. And that has allowed him to improve the catch on this right side, as well as the overall balance and timing of the stroke. Now my favorite shot to look at here is the front on view. This is quite a significant change. So for him, if you have a look at his left arm catch, this has improved a lot. So as we go through this here, you'll see on his left arm, previously he was very wide. The hand was wider than the elbow. Now out there, it's weak. You're not going to be holding much water. You're not gonna be pressing in the right direction. It's not a great position to be in. We always say the best swimmers in the world, at this point, their hand is narrower than the elbow. And it's somewhere between their shoulder and their elbow. Now, obviously he wasn't there in this earlier shot. Have a look at this one here. His hand is now in a bit narrower. And as he goes through the catch and here the diamond, so as the hand's passing under the shoulder, we call this the power diamond. That's quite a nice position. So it's making that half diamond shape that we strive towards. Here, he was just a little bit too wide still. And then he finishes off near the hip and that's looking good. And again here, he was quite wide at the back. So that's a really nice change on the left arm. Now, if we look at the right one, you'll see he's not perfect with the right arm yet, but he's much better. So we're starting to get a bit more bend at the elbow through his catch. And if we measure this angle of his arm, we'll see that he's around about 140. Now here in his catch, around 163. And the ideal angle is 100 to 120 for a good catch. So he's on his way there with a better catch. So 100 to 120, that'd be something like that. So he's not too far off it now and he's not quite as straight. And you'll see he's getting a much better diamond, half diamond under there compared to here. So both arms have improved quite significantly over the course of a couple of months. And I think that's contributed greatly to the 20 seconds faster per 100. And he says he can feel the water better now too. So he hasn't just worked on all these things at once. He's followed that order, head position, timing, and then catch and pull. So if you follow things in the right order, so if you follow those five core principles that we've got inside our Effortless Swimming membership, that's the right order to tick things off in. Because if he was to try and work on the catch immediately, then it would be very hard if he was still pulling through too soon, if his head was still too high. So it's much easier if you follow things in the right order. Now, looking at this footage here, what I suggested to him going forwards was to still continue to work on the catch because there's still room to improve there. And one of the other key things as well was to finish his right pull a little bit better. So the difference here, or what I'd like him to do, is once he gets from here to here, you'll see how the palm of his hand is really turned into the body. So if he can keep the palm of his hand facing back behind him for longer through there, he's gonna get so much more out of that right arm. The left arm does a really good job of it. You'll see here he keeps that palm facing back behind him, exits past the hip, that's a lot better. But that right arm, there's room for improvement with how he's finishing the stroke there. This is a really good result, 20 seconds faster in the space of a couple months of work and one analysis session or one clinic that he did with us. And so this is great to see. And there is nothing stopping him from getting down towards sub 140, sub 130 with enough work, enough training, and just focusing on the next change of his stroke and technique. And so this is great to see. And I love when people attend our clinics or they send a video for our Effortless Swim membership and they're able to just focus on these changes. And then they enjoy swimming a whole lot more. And the feedback that Seb gave was that he actually enjoys the swimming now, whereas before it was not that much fun, didn't look forward to going to the pool. And now that's really changed. So good work, Seb. Great to see these changes and look forward to seeing what you achieve in the future.