Australian swimmer Sam Ashby talks about the freestyle catch position and the best angle to pull through in. If you’d like more on improving your freestyle the Mastering Freestyle program is the fastest way to improve your swimming even if you haven’t improved in years.

Sam Ashby talks about reducing the bubbles on your hand in freestyle by changing the duration of your glide. The full Skype interview with Sam is available inside the Mastering Freestyle program.

Kas is a beautiful city on the Turkish coast

The Swim Trek went for 7 days which was a perfect amount of time. After a few days of 5-6km of swimming you start to feel fit and the swimming becomes easy. The water temp was 25-27 degrees and the outside temp was 35 on average. We had a group of 16 swimmers and with two Swim Trek guides, Mia and Sean. They make sure the trip runs smoothly and organise everything.

Waiting to start: We had three different 'speed' groups so you could swim at your own pace

Unlike most holidays where you arrive home and feel like you’ve eaten and slept too much…a Swim Trek holiday will leaving you feeling refreshed and fit.

The typical day would consist of buffet breakfast overlooking the ocean…jumping on a boat and heading to part of the coastline…swimming for 90 minutes…a massive lunch of fresh fish and salads on the boat…reading a book and a short nap in the sun and then another 60-90 mins in the water.

The view from breakfast at Nur Beach Hotel

We were split up into three separate ’speed’ groups so you swum with people your own speed. This meant that no one was too fast or too slow.

The cost of most swim treks is under £1,000 British Pounds and generally includes accommodation, breakfast and lunch…and of course the boat trips to the coast.

My sister Courtney and I before swimming from Greece to Turkey

The good thing about Swim Trek is they use trusted hotels and boats providers and their safety record is perfect. Copy cat companies have recently started up which I have heard nightmare stories about. Swim Trek is the original ‘swimming holiday’ company. Swim Trek also run tours in Greece, Egypt, Sicily, Croatia, Mexico, Scotland and Finland. If you’ve been on a SwimTrek holiday before let me know in the comments section below!

If you’re interested in doing a Swim Trek you can contact them through their website at www.swimtrek.com. If you want improve your freestyle technique before you go check out the Mastering Freestyle program.

Swimming has also has it’s ‘one percenters’. Small things that you can do in training to make yourself that little bit quicker than your competition. Let’s take a look.

1. There’s only two ways to swim faster – You can either increase your stroke rate (the number of strokes you take per minute) or you can travel further for each stroke you take (also  known as distance per stroke). Don’t complicate things. They are the only two ways to swim faster.
2. Head position determines body position – Your body will follow where you head goes. If you’re hips are sinking, it’s likely your head is too high. Use the angle of your head to control where your body sits in the water. Throwing your head side-to-side will cause you to ‘snake’ in the water. Keep your head still!
3. Kick within your body shape – Your kick is used for two things. Propulsion and body balance. Kicking your legs outside the shape and alignment of your body creates drag. Keep your kick small and tight.
4. Push off on your side (in training) – When you push off the wall in training it’s faster to leave on your side than to push off on your front. Hold onto the wall with one hand and then push off at an angle. You can save up to half a second with this.
5. Finish on your side – When you throw yourself into a finish, you can get there quicker by rotating to your side. It lengthens your reach by 10-15cm.
6. No breathing the last 5 meters – When you’re finishing in training or in a race, you should never breath the last 5 meters. Taking a breath will slow you down up to half a second!

Doing these small things can add up to seconds over a hundred meters. These are some of the easier things to do that will decrease your times…just like learning the correct swimming technique can drop your times dramatically.

You know that not everyone has swims with the same style or rhythm in freestyle. This video provides a great breakdown of the different freestyle techniques. There’s more than one way to swim, and any coach that tries to tell you that there is only one is incorrect.

We’ll be covering which technique is right for you in updates from our Mastering Freestyle program.

These are the three types:

1. Hip-driven technique: Hip-driven freestyle is used by Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, Larsen Jensen and  Libby Trickett and is a slower-stroke-rate freestyle. It is typically swam at 60 to 70 strokes a minute.The hand holds the water in front after the entry before beginning the propulsive motion backward. The slower time of the arm pull cycle allows the swimmer to get a bigger hip turn and generate a larger counter force to pull against. This increases the distance from each stroke. It’s better swum in distances over 200 meters and a strong six beat is needed to swim it fast.
2. Shoulder-driven technique: Shoulder-driven freestyle is used by Peter Van den Hoogenband, Janet Evans and Alexander Popov and is a higher-stroke-rate technique. It’s swam at 80-110 strokes per minute.The entry hander catches quicker and the release is done sooner which results in a faster stroke rate but less hip rotation. Not as much power is generated from the pull but because there is more strokes it makes up for the power difference. The shoulders typically rotate more than the hips in this technique. Two beat and six beat kick are both acceptable, though only a six beat kick should be used when sprinting
3. Hybrid technique: In recent years a number of swimmers are drawing on elements of both techniques. It is becoming increasingly popular for middle distance swimmers (100, 200 and 400 meters) who draw on the advantages of both techniques and opt for a hybrid freestyle.They use one arm with shoulder-driven technique and the other arm uses a hip- driven technique. It has become popularised by Michael Phelps. It requires a very strong kick and breathing to one side and can be used in open water swims if you have a strong kick

We’ll be covering which technique is right for you in updates from our Mastering Freestyle program.

1. Get Lean

Go stand at the finish line of an Ironman from the nine to ten hour mark. How many thick legs do you see? How many solid necks? Ripped or buff guys and gals? Whether muscle bulk or fat bulk, very little of it exists for the fast Ironman finishers. Muscle takes a significant amount of energy to cool and carry, and fat, while a fantastic energy source, vastly decreases movement economy. To break 10 hours in Ironman, you must be willing to lose fat, cannibalize muscle, give up your nice arms, and put up with family members telling you that you look “too skinny”. This will take a range of strategies from intermittent fasting, to unfed cardio sessions, to frequent dessert and alcohol skipping.

2. Race

Subconsciously, you must be on cruise control to break 10 hours in Ironman. This means that you must be able to execute a near flawless nutrition protocol, pacing strategy, swim-to-bike and bike-to-run transition, and you must be able to do this under stressful race conditions. Most of the triathletes who break 10 hours in Ironman have raced enough to avoid making the small mistakes like overinflating the tires, forgetting the salt pills, letting pride dictate pace, eating too much, drinking too little or swimming off course. Peppering the build-up to an Ironman with a strategically planned series of sprint, Olympic and half-Ironman events creates a smart and stress-free triathlete who doesn’t commit the small Ironman racing mistakes that add up to dozens of minutes.

3. Plan

To break 10 hours in an Ironman, you need to know the course. A generic approach simply will not work. Several weeks prior to the Ironman you must sit down and consider the layout of the swim course. Where will you stand on the beach? When will you sight? When will you surge in pace? You must break the bike into key portions, and create a fueling, pacing and mental strategy for each. Where can you attack? Where can you legally draft? At what points will you fuel? Finally, you must know every turn and hill in the run course, because an unfamiliar course can play nasty tricks with your confidence and pacing. Getting to the 18 mile mark and having 5 key landmarks that are going to string you along to the finish gives you much better pacing than getting to the 18 mile mark and having 8 miles of pure unknown.

4. Periodize

Early in the year, several months prior to your Ironman, you must be willing to be getting your ass kicked at club swims, track sessions, or group rides. You simply cannot maintain peak Ironman fitness year round and expect to have perfectly fresh 10 hour-and-under legs on race day. Whether you are focusing on volume early in the year and intensity as the Ironman approaches, or vice versa (both approaches can work), you must refuse to do the same training intensity and volume week in and week out, year-round. By periodizing, or clearly identifying periods of the training year during which you are going to focus on specific skills or fitness parameters, you improve in a stair-stepping fashion to a peak on Ironman race day, rather than simply flatlining at a medium pace year round.

5. Recover

Training consistency is crucial to be able to break 10 hours in Ironman. The fast Ironman triathletes can come back day-after-day for each training session, and miss very few key sessions during the year – and a big part of this is recovery. If constant injuries and immune system crashes are sabotaging the training plan, it can mean a loss of 20 minutes to 2 hours in Ironman fitness. Proper recovery requires implementation and frequent use of ice and ice baths, compression gear, massage therapy, foam rollers, amino acids and other nutrition recovery supplements, easy leg-flushing workouts after hard days or races, and an open mind to physical therapy and rehabilitation modalities such as ultrasound, electrostimulation, infrared, vibration, or magnets if an injury actually does occur. Proper recovery also means being able to identify when you’re not recovered, via tracking of resting heart rate, soreness, sleep and when necessary, biological parameters such as hormone ratios.

Ready for the next five steps of how to break 10 hours in an Ironman?

The solution comes down to two things.

Your stroke (swimming technique) and your breathing technique (ability to control your breathing). The breathing technique is rarely spoken about, so I thought I’d shed some light on it. Here’s a video which explains the correct way to breath in freestyle.

Ben Greenfield

Kerry Sullivan

If you haven’t heard of Ben Greenfield and Kerry Sullivan yet, you soon will.

These two guys are making waves in the triathlon community with their Rockstar triathlon academy – a closed-door triathlon training and mentoring program set up specifically to help triathletes drop their times in all three legs of their race using a step-by-step formula.

I interviewed Ben and Kerry to try and pry out of them some of their best advice and tips for triathlon training and racing.

How they got started

Kerry was originally a soccer player, but after attempting his first triathlon in college he realised he not only enjoyed the sport but was good at it. Ben picked up triathlon during his Master’s degree in sports science, as he thought it would be a good way to help his research.

Why triathlons are cool

Lots of cool toys to play with (bike, wetsuits, heart rate monitors, etc). The races are great fun, you get to mix it up with the different sports. The people are driven, competitive but also a lot of fun to be around. You can eat “a crap load”!

What it takes to make it

Find good coaches and training partners to work with. That will kick start your racing and get you ‘up to speed’ with everyone else sooner than normal.

How do you get started

Get out there and start training. You can read as many books as you want but that won’t get you closer to kicking butt in a race. Even if you start small, it’s better than nothing. Have a training plan, start following it and find someone to keep you accountable to it.

How to turbo charge your results

Find a good coach who can show you results. Follow their training plan. Be consistent with your training. Have fun in your training and competitions!

Ben and Kerry are two guys helping new and experienced triathletes to crush it with their training strategies. You can get 50% off their Rockstar Triathlete Academy membership through our VIP link here.

Increasing your lung capacity isn't just about holding your breath

Imagine swimming at a faster pace for longer because you learned a simple exercise you could easily practice as you trained. This is my goal with this article.

There are three things in swimming which affect your oxygen levels. They are:

1. Technique
2. Lung capacity
3. Mindset

They may not sound like your usual factors. Let’s take a look at them.

Technique

In swimming, it’s important you have your swimming technique right. If you’re inefficient, you make a lot of splash and have an untidy technique you’ll lose breath quickly. On the hand, if your technique is smooth, balanced and controlled you’ll be able to manage your oxygen levels easily. Here’s an example:

Last week I challenged my swimmers to swim as far as they could without taking a breath. You’ll never believe what happened next.

Of the 18 swimmers who tried, only 3 made it the entire 50 meters. The other 15 didn’t make it past 30 meters. How could there be such a drop off?

The difference was their technique.

The swimmers who made it 50 meters were able to minimise their kick (which uses most of your oxygen), stay balanced in the water and sit themselves high in the water. The others were doing the opposite of these things.

Lung Capacity

To suck in more oxygen with each breath, it stands to reason that the bigger your lung capacity, the more oxygen you can get.

My favorite exercise to increase lung capacity is to do breath control swimming. This is when you breath every X strokes per lap. Stay with me on this because it can have a big impact on your swimming.

For example, if you are swimming 200 meters in a 50 meter pool, try breath every 3 strokes on the first lap, every 5 strokes the second lap, every 3 stroke the third and every 7 strokes the final lap. If you’re new to this it may be difficult to get to 7 strokes, so some practice will be needed.

The most my swimmers can do is breathing every 11 or 12 strokes if they only swim 50 meters of it. Start of with breathing every 5 strokes to push yourself, and build up as you get more comfortable. Some of the swimming workouts I’ve included in Effortless Swimming workouts use this type of breath control.

Mindset

Mindset plays a big role in swimming, even though it’s rarely spoken about. It’s even more true when it’s comes to breath control. Because it’s such a mental battle when you run out of oxygen, your lungs are screaming for a breath and any second you feel you could black out. In reality, we give up much earlier than we need to. We tell ourselves we must breath or won’t be able to continue. That’s crap.

I’ve come to realise we can usually push ourselves much more than we let on. The human body is an amazing thing. It’s not going to let anything happen to you when it comes to holding your breath.

Focus your mind on other things, ‘switch it off’ so to speak. Go inside your mind and relax as you go through the breath control exercises.

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To increase your lung capacity it comes down to improving your technique, working on the drills to expand your lungs and being able to control your mental state. Practice these things and you should find yourself swimming longer distances with less effort. It’s an important part of swimming which I heard Australia’s head coach Leigh Nugent speak highly about. Try the exercises in your next session.