Hello and welcome to In at the Deep End, Coach's Corner. Now, this is a bit of a break from the norm, a new monthly version of In at the Deep End, in which I want to help you to achieve your swimming ambitions, whatever they may be, by answering a few of your questions and passing on some of the tips, techniques, and advice that I've picked up across 20 years of swim coaching. So once a month, between main episodes, Coach's Corner will take a deep dive into a coaching topic or theme.

And I want you to help me decide what those themes are. You can be a part of the show by emailing me or leaving me a voice message. Tell me what you struggle with, what you wish you could improve, what your ambitions are, why you feel you're not improving, or what you wish you could do better. All the links you need to do so are in the show notes. So get in touch and you can be a part of next month's

Coach's Corner.

So to kick things off in episode one, I want to talk about connection. So let's get to it.

Does the water fill you with dread, fear of depth, darkness, sudden panic? All those things can hit anyone at any level. It applies to top level swimmers. It applies to people like Becky Adlington.

It's applied to people like Mark Foster, who has been on the show, who've all got fear of open water. it's applied to seasoned triathletes and iron men who are, you know, mid swim and can suddenly get a panic. There are loads of people I've coached who are incredibly good swimmers in the pool, but you take them out of that, you put them in open water, and suddenly these primal fears start kicking in. We had Vicky Anstey, who's been on the show and who rode the Pacific.

But before she started, one of the things she had to get over was the s absolute primal fear of open water. And when I coached her, it wasn't really about swimming, it was about a lot of things and a lot of trauma that had been embedded into her and that made her genuinely fearful of water. And it was going to be something she was going to spend months on. So when I did coach her, it was important that we got over the first hurdle, which most people and most swim coaches neglect.

which is connection. I even coached a and this is what brought it all up, I coached a Sikh grandmother who it was recommended to me by her s her grandson who I'd coached, who said he wanted his mu his grandmother to have a go at learning to swim. And I remember when she first came into the pool and I started l talking to her, it was immediately apparent that this wasn't about just swimming, this is about a lot more. And she told me that she couldn't even put

Her face in the water. And so our approach was completely changed immediately. Everything I had in plan I had planned for the lesson was now rapidly undergoing a quick change and a bit of adaptability. And what I did there was with this amazing woman was that we started talking about the spirituality of water and how that's what we were going to try and connect with.

Because I felt there was absolutely no point starting to talk about the mechanics of breathing and moving your limbs until your soul and your spirit and your head and therefore your heart rate are comfortable with the water. So the first things we did in that case was we we started making analogies between immersing ourselves into the spiritual element of water and liking it to Varanasi in India and

swimming in the Ganges or just immersing in the Ganges. And that was our first step. So there is

a very, very important reason why we need to feel connected with the water. And the reason why we need to do that is because if we don't, our heart rates are always going be in elevated, our breeding will always be compromised. And we'll always have that slight fear that when we do swim, at some point we're going to get hit by a panic attack and not know how to deal with it. So the fundamentals of any swimming

Have to start with connection, making the lake your friend. So what is the answer? How do we get more connected with the water? Well, the way I do it is I follow a number of steps, five steps, in foot in fact. And the first one is reflection. We just actually don't get wet. We stand on the pool side and we talk about the water. We talk about its spirituality. We talk about

why we have or may have apprehension or fear of that water. Sometimes it's apparent and sometimes it can come out quickly and easily in discussion. Other times it's buried. It's buried so deeply that even even my client doesn't know why. But it's there and at some point it probably will make an appearance and will understand why. But traumas can be deeply embedded and not that obvious. So the first thing we do is we re re

We reflect, we reflect on the water and we reflect on our relationship with the water. The second thing we do is we talk about breathing and heart rate. And we talk about this in the concept in well, in the context of the land. So we're talking about doing breathing exercises while we look at the body of water that we're about to get into, whether it's a lake or whether it's a river, whether it's a pool, or it's the sea. We look at that

body of water and we practice breathing exercises to manage our heart rate. Because managing our heart rate and being calm is absolutely fundamental to being able to execute anything physically and properly. And then thirdly, we start talking about the lake as our friend. And the reasons I give people are things like, well, you know, that ninety percent of what we're made of is water.

Hundred percent of life on this planet revolves around water. And I'd say a hundred percent of your soul revolves potentially around water as well. So we start looking at the body of water as our friend rather than an enemy, rather than something that we have to get through. And step four is that we start talking about small steps, small steps into the water. We don't do anything heavy duty, we don't go straight in there and go for it.

with our swimming. We are starting to get at ease with the concept of the water and we start by simply gently, and depending on the level of swimmer or person I'm dealing with, we gently walk into the water and we don't go out of our depth. What are those small steps in more detail? Well, number one, we do some landside visualization and breathing exercises. The lake is your friend, I say.

There are two types of people that I quite often see when I'm coaching or when I go to any body of water. There's the person who swims effortlessly, virtually with a serene almost smile on their face. And then you have that person who is making a genuine effort, doesn't look entirely comfortable, is grimacing, and it looks like they're fighting their way through the water. And I always say to people, you want to be that first person. You want to be that person who is serene.

Who f looks like they're in their element and is effectively smiling as they move through it. So that's the first thing we do. We talk about being a friend of the body of water, a friend of the lake. Then secondly, we go into the water itself. We partially immerse ourselves. We start getting used to the temperature. We go in, we touch the water with our hands. Maybe we we sprinkle some of it on our faces. We just start to feel.

what the water is what the water feels like, its temperature, its effect on our skin, all of those things are all part of the sensory process of starting to feel comfortable in the water. So it's partial immersion, with or without a wetsuit, it doesn't matter. Depends what your tolerances are. And obviously, after a bit of partial immersion, we then and very slowly go for complete immersion. and that is literally a

a baptism of fire, or in this case, water. So we're talking about trying to completely immerse ourselves. And I don't underestimate the potential trauma of that with some people. Some people it's fine. They can do it straight away. They go under, hold their nose and bang they're out, end off. But there's other people who have never been asked to do that. The Sikh grandmother, for example, just going completely under with your eyes shut and not panicking.

not overthinking things like a lot of grown-ups and adults do is sometimes quite difficult to achieve. But we do it. We go completely under and then up. Then stage four is where it starts to get interesting. We learn to float. And learning to float sounds really easy, but it's it's lot it's a lot more than that. We are learning to let go. And we learn to let go by lying on our front

and lying on our back, both of them. And that's really important. And I remember coaching someone at the lake once who I managed to get to float on her back. But she was holding on to my hand and we were talking and I and she pr she she asked me to promise I would not let go. And we talked about I could virtually see her heart rate racing. Alison, this is you if you're listening. And Alison wouldn't let go.

for twenty minutes. this is early on in my career, and I honestly thought, I don't know what I'm gonna do here. But we kept talking, we kept talking about letting go, we talked about why the lake was your friend, etc. And eventually that heart rate started to go down, and then we went from holding my hand with the whole hand to holding my hand with a few fingers to one finger, and then to start to let go for moments of a second, two seconds.

five seconds until eventually we were into minutes of free floating. And we did that initially on our backs so that you could breathe and you could feel like yourself letting go. And then we did it on our fronts, holding our breath. So that was the a very, very important stage and it was all about letting go, floating. Then we moved on to stage five, which is learning to fly solo.

And this is a breakthrough moment and not to be underestimated. When I run my retreats in Watergate Bay, I have people there who are virtual novices alongside people who are seasoned iron men. And I get that. And then we do the same exercise. It doesn't matter what level you are, we do the same exercise, which is learning to fly and letting go at the same time. And this is as simple as pushing off from the side.

and gliding with your head down in a beautiful streamlined position. And you'll be surprised how far you go. Some people will go anything from five meters right through to sixteen or seventeen meters without taking a single stroke. And the i ironic thing about that is that during that float, that glide, you are and you are probably travelling faster than if you actually tried to swim.

And that's what this sport is all about. And that's why I teach swimming not really

just as a sport, but more as a performance art. Because it's the only sport or it's the only performance art where you do less and you get more. In fact, it's probably the only thing in life where you do less and you get more. And remembering to just let go and fly is very counterintuitive. We are taught to get in the water and we must be.

always be propelling, otherwise something awful will happen and we'll sink. When in actual fact, being relaxed, letting go, pushing, gliding and flying is not only saving us so much energy, but bizarrely, most of that time we are actually travelling at our fastest. So the push and the glide, learning to fly solo, as I say, it's the foundation to every every stroke and

When you're swimming lengths in the pool, it is the start of every length. When you get to the end of a length and you turn and you push off and glide, you have a free ride for five to ten meters before you get into your stroke. And the top swimmers, the top Olympians know that. They've built in small dolphin kicks to enhance it perhaps, but they know full well that when you push and glide, you're travelling at your fastest and best, and the body is travelling at its fastest.

And in fact, interesting fact here, when you swim dolphin kick underwater, so you're not using your arms, you are simply pushing, gliding, and doing a dolphin kick, you will travel faster underwater than you will on the surface of the water. why it's not an Olympic event, I do not know, but it's a proven fact. So we want to let go, we want to fly, we want to be one of those annoying people.

Who seem to fly past us when we're in the pool, making virtually no effort. And the reason why they're not making that any effort is one, because they're at one with the water, they're at peace with the water. And two, they've learned to let go so that y they know that being aerodynamic, being having your body in alignment and doing the minimal amount to just simply enhance it is going to make them go faster and use a lot less energy.

So I want all the swimmers I coach to be that person, that annoying person that goes past you, making no effort and just flying. That brings me on to item number six. So the next stage is small but frequent doses of immersion. We're now in the water. We've learned how to push and glide. We haven't done any propulsion yet, if you've noticed. That's going to come, but learn to

Push, glide in an aligned way with your body, aquaplaning near the surface of the water are the two fundamentals of swimming fast. Once they got right, then things happen, and that's when you can start swimming extremely fast and extremely efficiently. So item number six is starting after that to make small but frequent appearances in the water. Any immersion is good immersion.

So anytime, anywhere for any length of time, but start going into the water more and more frequently, even if it's only for five minutes. Practice your push and glides. if you're on holiday and you're in a small little pool and you think, well, what could I be doing in that? Well, I always tell people you could be pushing and gliding, seeing how far you can get your body to move with the minimal amount of effort. Item seven

is then right, we're gonna move on from this. We're now going to start moving on to actual propulsion. And that's where three bits of kit start coming into the equation. And this is what I would recommend people buy if they haven't got them already. I'd buy a kickboard, a pull boy, and a pair of fins. And then what we will do is start working with those three basic tools to slowly build the mechanics for a stroke.

So there we have it, and we have connection. Connection is all important. I've coached people like Joe Wicks.

Joe Wicks is a classic example of someone who is probably one of the fittest men on the planet, as we know. But he went to the lake and he went swimming, and after fifty meters, he was out of breath. He was panicking. And when we had our coaching sessions, we spent a large part of the first section of our

coaching session, just doing exactly this about connection. Talking about being comfortable in the water, getting our heart rate down, learning about body alignment, and learning to effectively cheat. The next stage after that was rapid. And I remember the second lesson and I went out with Joe, we started swimming and Joe was Joe and I, I was pacing Joe in the water. And I just said, look, just hold back. We've now got our breathing under control. We can now

Trust me, effectively probably swim forever. He didn't believe me. Anyway, we tried it. We swam seven hundred and fifty meters, and by the end of it, he was going, I'm not even slightly out of breath. That was absolutely fantastic. Can we go around and do it again? So I said, Well look, we're running out of time lesson wise, but let's do a four hundred. And so we did a four hundred and I said, For this one, I'm gonna let you go a bit quicker, but we're gonna do it in three stages. You're gonna stick with me for all three. I'm gonna pace you.

So n we're gonna do the first third slope and and just trust me, just stick to my pace. Then the second third, we're gonna pick up the pace to mid pace. You stay with me, and then on the third, the last leg back to shore, you can let go, you can let rip, you can go with whatever you want to do. So we did. And Joe was fantastic. He actually stuck with me for one and two, and then we got to the third section of our final swim.

And I said, you can go now, you can off you go, thinking, right, I'll just pace him into shore. And the man was a rocket. my forty years, fifty years of swimming did not prepare me for Joe Wicks, who has suddenly become an accomplished swimmer and suddenly shot off. What he doesn't know is that whilst I was swimming alongside him, pretending to swim under control and effortlessly.

Inside I was probably dying. The man is very, very fit. And when we got to the end, I styled it

out and talked to him about how well he had swum. But that just goes to show the fundamental first step of swimming has got to be connection. After you've got that done, after you've got your heart rate in control and your brain in control, and the lake is your friend, the water is your friend, everything then becomes natural.

So that's it for the first ever.

In at the deep end coach's corner. What did you think? Let me know if today's tips on connection have helped you over the coming weeks, or if there's a training niggle or ambition that you'd like me to address next month, get in touch and let me know. Some of the things I want to cover off will include the perfect plod, swimming like Katie Ledecki, hashtag swoon, breathing and developing a repertoire to be adaptable, the kick.

What is this thing about the two, the four, the six beat kick? What do I do about my sinky legs? And then the speed, the need for speed, and the increasing need for speed as we get older. So those are some of the subjects that I want to cover off, but let me know what else I could be covering that would help you. You can send me an email

or leave me a voice message, which I'll play out on the next show.

All the links you need are in the show notes. I'll be back in a fortnight with a main show and another great guest. So until then, keep swimming. Remember to connect and remember that lake, that sea, that pool, that river is your friend. I'm Salim Ahmed. This has been In at the Deep End, Coach's Corner.

See you soon.