Join us on today's episode of Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast to unlock the secrets to becoming a stronger, more efficient swimmer with insights from Ryan Evernden, swim coach, and strength and conditioning expert. Discover why mastering the art of land-based strength training is essential for any competitive master swimmer aiming for peak performance. Ryan shares practical exercises and key principles that will help you develop the range of motion, strength and stability needed to improve your swimming technique and efficiency. Dive into the often overlooked yet critical connection between your land workouts and swimming performance, and understand why a balanced training regimen is crucial.
Optimize your shoulder mobility and enhance your swimming efficiency by focusing on breathing mechanics and thoracic flexibility. Ryan explains how proper diaphragm use can reduce tension, improving not only your shoulder mobility but also your overall swimming stamina. Learn specific exercises and targeted muscle release techniques to ensure full scapular range of motion. Strength training enthusiasts will appreciate Ryan’s insights into using isometric holds for shoulder stabilisation and the principles of progressive overload for safe and effective strength development.
Enhance your swim with explosive plyometric exercises and core-strengthening routines designed for swimmers. Ryan emphasises the importance of incorporating these exercises alongside traditional strength training to boost stability and explosiveness. From overhead ball throws to banded tantrums, find out how to safely implement these workouts once you've secured proper overhead mobility.
Finally, Ryan delves into maintaining performance and longevity, sharing strategies to prevent and rehabilitate common injuries while setting realistic goals for long-term improvement. Don’t miss this comprehensive guide to elevating your swimming game through strategic strength and conditioning practices!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Danielle Spurling (00:09):
Hello swimmers and welcome to another
episode of Torpedo Swim Talkpodcast.
I'm your host, DanielleSpurling, and each week we chat
to a master swimmer from aroundthe world about their swimming
journey.
Today I'm welcoming back to thepodcast three-time guest and a
favourite of the show, RyanEvernden.
Ryan is a former top-levelswimmer coach and strength and
(00:34):
conditioning guru.
He's talking with us todayabout the crux of what we, as
master swimmers, need to do withour strength training on land
before our technique, andtherefore our strength, speed
and efficiency, improves in thewater.
It's a simple but oftenneglected fact.
Let's hear from Ryan now as wesolve this dilemma we all face.
(00:56):
Hi Ryan, thanks for joining uson the podcast today.
Ryan Evernden (01:04):
Good to be back.
Danielle Spurling (01:05):
Yeah, it's great to have you back Now for
our listeners that haven't heardfrom you.
On the other two podcasts thatyou've been on with us, I've
been on two then You've been ontwo.
Ryan Evernden (01:15):
Am I the only third time, or has Andy got a
third time?
Danielle Spurling (01:19):
You are the only third time I do Woo, yay,
yay, the only third time, yay.
So you're a swim coach andstrength and conditioning guru
based in Perth, westernAustralia, and I wanted to get
you back on the podcast todiscuss a post that you put out
last week which really hit homefor me, and I just wanted to
(01:40):
read it out for everyone first,and then we'll have a chat about
it.
So you said many swimmers failto understand the hard truth
when it comes to improving theirtechnique in the water, and if
you're not able to get intoposition and stabilise yourself
out of the water, there's no waythat you're going to be able to
do it in the water.
So can you tell us what youmeant by that statement, because
(02:01):
I think it's really pertinent,particularly for master swimmers
.
Ryan Evernden (02:05):
Yeah.
So this realistically comesback to you know, something that
I've personally battled withover the years and I just see
popping up a lot and masters iswhere this probably pops up the
most is you know we have allthese guys doing, you know these
array of drills and stuff likethat, with technical
improvements, people doing youknow underwater filming, giving
(02:28):
people video analysis and allthat stuff's excellent.
But I feel like, and from whatwe've seen in our program, is
that people just don'tunderstand that if you're
physically not capable ofgetting into a position and
stabilizing that position, nomatter what video analysis you
do or the amount of drills thatyou do in the water, if you
(02:50):
don't have the physical capacityto do something, it doesn't
matter how many times you tellsomeone how to do it, they're
not able to do it.
Like if you can't get your andfreestyle is a prime example,
and I just for anyone who mightbe a breaststroker there's a
very good breaststroke example.
I can go through later as wellbut for freestyle or any of the
strokes, because they allrequire you to get your arm
(03:10):
above your head.
So if you're standing up andyou can't put your arm above
your head without your lowerback, compensating or there are
any other compensationmechanisms going on there just
you standing up best way to dothis, if you're at home
listening or you know where thatis to do it lying down on your
back with your feet planted onthe floor.
(03:31):
Put your arms up in front ofyou so they're facing the
ceiling, and just try and getyour thumbs to touch the floor
behind your head and see if yourlower back comes off the floor
or anything else comes off thefloor to try and make that
happen.
Or can you actually get therewithout any rotation of your
hand or anything like thathaving to take place?
If you can't get your arm aboveyour head, you're just, for
(03:51):
starters, you're just gonnaspend a lot of time not being
able to get into that high elbowcatch position that you're all
chasing, and I think that'ssomething that has been really
not emphasised enough,especially in the master's
swimming community.
There's so many and especiallywith this boom of master's
(04:13):
swimming and boom of open waterswimming that we're certainly
having in Perth at the moment, Ican see it across the country
and globally as well, especiallyin the master's communities and
globally as well, especially,as you know, in the masters
communities, like there's thisjust rampant neglect for the
(04:33):
amount of need that there is toget your, get yourself
physically able to do thesethings before you get in the
water.
Um, and it's.
It's something that you know,we've we've seen time and time
again at formidable um with ourclients that come see us, and
over and over again, we just wekeep trying to make this, this
point come through.
But with everything, it's athing that requires time, and I
(04:54):
was.
Actually, when I put that postup, I was very surprised with
the result that I got, the, thefeedback that came from that,
the amount of support thatactually came from that.
I was thinking that it might bea mildly controversial topic to
tell people to stop doingtechnical drills and start
focusing on how you'rephysically able to do things,
(05:14):
especially in the swimmingcommunity, but it seemed like
there was a lot of agreeancethere.
What's great to see.
Danielle Spurling (05:20):
Yeah, absolutely, and I mean to do
what you're saying.
You need to have a better rangeof motion or range of movement,
and you need to increase yourstrength and your stability.
So how does a master swimmer goabout increasing their range of
motion?
Ryan Evernden (05:40):
know one one cannot happen without the other.
And then the other one.
The second part of it isessential for maintaining and
actually achieving it.
So the first point is obviouslythe range of motion.
If you do not have the range ofmotion capacity to get yourself
into the position you need toget into to have the correct
(06:00):
biomechanical technique thateveryone's looking for in the
water, you're not gonna doesn'tmatter, like that's looking for.
In the water, you're not goingto, doesn't matter, like that's.
That's point one.
How you get there is a littlebit different, and it's not just
stretch, stretch for days, um.
But once you have that range ofmotion, the stability is what
you need, and that comes frombeing able to actually pull your
shoulder back into the joint,engage your lats properly and be
(06:23):
able to pull through the water.
The amount of swimmers that Iwork with that have never been
able to engage, that I've neverfelt their lats on while
swimming before is, is simplylike baffling to me, because if
you're doing a giant pool setand all you're feeling is like
an intense, um discomfort inyour shoulders and your lats,
(06:45):
you're not waking up with sorelats or pecs.
You have not used your lats orpecs enough, I don't think.
Or your loading needs toimprove.
Um, not saying that everyoneneeds to be sore after workouts,
but that would be a goodexample that people just don't
don't have.
And that's where the strengthside of things comes in.
So you need to be able to havethe strength to be able to
support the joint hold positionand then be able to deliver
(07:07):
whatever power you maybe mayhave.
And they're the two parts.
So, yeah, range of motion toget you there, and then
stability and strength to beable to actually apply whatever
you've currently got, orwhatever you're currently
building, to the water toactually have a meaningful
effect.
And to get back to how you canachieve that.
(07:29):
Range of motion is obviously,you know, mobility.
Work is key for that.
So, opening yourself up.
If we stay on the shoulder justfor argument's sake because
that's probably what most peoplelistening are going to be
having trouble with first thingyou need to do is assess your
breathing.
What is probably for a lot ofpeople going like why the hell
(07:49):
would we look at our breathingto assess our shoulder?
Your breathing mechanics comefrom your diaphragm, your rib
cage, all those things, andthese things are all connected.
So when we're working, we liketo work.
We have a rule we workproximally to distal, so we
always deal with the mostcentral thing first, because if
we fix the central thing a lotof the time, that can be the
(08:11):
root cause for everything else.
So we make sure we go centraland then we work our way out,
because if you try working yourway back in, you're generally
just going to be tripping overyourself on the path there.
So breathing mechanics is keybecause a lot of people are, you
know, breathing without gooddiaphragm use and stuff like
(08:31):
that.
So they keep all the all thetension up high and they breathe
into their shoulders and neckwhat creates, you know,
unnecessary tension, and andfatigue and fatigue is the main
one.
So what people don't realize iswhen things are feeling tired,
they're often very fatigued froma lot of use and that's what
creates the tension.
(08:52):
So they kind of lock up becausethey're very tired and then
when you try to use them,there's nothing left for them to
give.
So breathing is something thateveryone has to do and everyone
has to do all the time.
So that's where you need tostart, because if you're not
addressing that, you're notgoing to mobilize enough or
you're just going to keeprunning.
There's going to be this bigfeedback loop coming up.
(09:14):
You're going to get themobility, you're going to go
through a bit of training.
You're going to come back backdown to getting tight after,
whatever happens.
You get stressed or somethingor something, and then you're
going to be starting that cycleall over again.
So start there.
The next part in terms ofworking our way out would be
making sure that you have atleast 10 degrees of upper
(09:36):
thoracic mobility, so that isthe ability for you just to lift
your chest up without yourlower mid-back doing much work.
To keep it very simple, so wecan get it across on an audio
platform um, that will come froma lot of you know, extension
work for your upper back andthings like we call them a
(09:56):
peanut.
I'm not actually too sure whatthey are, but they're the spiky
balls that are kind of joinedtogether.
Okay, a nice little bit foryour um, for your spine to sit
on, sit that in between yourshoulder blades open up, push
your, push your arms out infront of you and then do some
that breathing thing that wetalked about before, and this is
why that's so important isbecause that's our key to
(10:17):
getting this mobility release.
Go through that breathing, andnow, when you're doing stuff
like stretching or mobility workin this traditional sense, we
want to make sure that we aren'tforcing anything, that we are
relaxing and we are creating anenvironment where your body
decides like thinks that it's nolonger something to be scared
(10:38):
of and it's desensitizing itfrom whatever's going on around
it, so that so that's really keyon that part.
And then there's breathing andagain that thoracic extension
and going from there To mobilizefurther.
We then move our way out to thescap and we make sure that we
can get full scapular range,because if we can't get the full
scapular range, we will not beable to open up the shoulder
(10:58):
joint itself.
And then you can start movingto the shoulder joints.
That would be like release workaround your lats, your pecs,
and then you can start moving tothe shoulder joints.
That would be like release workaround your lats, your pecs,
making sure that you can getyour elbow up into your head if
you have it across your shoulder.
That would hopefully be able torelease you into getting full
overhead range of motion.
And then, once you can do that,then we need to start the
(11:21):
strength training.
The strength training.
So a lot of isometric holds inthis part.
When you're in this earlyintervention stage of holding
your shoulder inside the capsuleand making sure that you're
really stabilizing under loadand don't be obviously progress
your load without being an idiot, you know.
(11:41):
Start light, but don't beafraid to progress.
A lot of people get a bitscared of putting a bit of load
on it and don't do thatprogression.
So don't be afraid to progress,but just do it in a sensible
way.
Um, if you're looking for avery easy way to do progression
no more than 10 per week I wasgoing to actually ask.
Danielle Spurling (12:02):
I was going to ask that because I don't
think a lot of master swimmersknow about overload and
obviously there's a lot ofdifferent things you can
overload.
You can overload the rep.
You can increase the reps, theresistance, the volume, the
frequency.
You can decrease the rest.
Would you, would you recommendthat they change one variable
each week?
(12:22):
yeah to overload and should theydo the same within?
So if they're increasing theirreps each week to overload and
should they do the same within,so if they're increasing their
reps each week a little bit,would they stay with that
variable or would they move toanother one to make it more
productive?
Ryan Evernden (12:36):
Yeah.
So this starts going into themurky waters of periodisation
and progressive overload, buteasy way to think about it if
you just keep it.
To keep it as simple aspossible, we have intensity,
volume and rest is probably thethree that we're going to go
with today.
Intensity would be the extraload that you're putting onto
something.
Volume would be your reps andyour sets and your rest would be
(12:59):
the amount of time you giveyourself to recover afterwards.
Now, rest can be quite aninteresting one because,
depending on the adaptation thatyou want to get, you're
obviously going to be changingyour, your rest period and stuff
like that.
So it can be a bit tricky withrest.
So if you're just going to keepit even more simple, stay with
your intensity and volume and Iwould probably look to chase one
(13:21):
adaptation at a time.
So if we so if we're having ablock, say you map out a
four-week block and you're going, okay, this four-week block, we
are going to look at increasingthe intensity over this
four-week block.
So you'd start at your baselevel, you'd increase, say 10%
or under.
If it's under, that's fine.
(13:41):
Increase 10% again, increase10% again And% again, and just
that linear way of progressing,especially if you're very new
can work really well if you'resomeone who's a bit more trained
or has a little bit morefatigue levels.
Maybe if you stretch it out toa five week block, you can go,
you know, base 10%, 10%, slightdeload, 10% and then continue on
(14:06):
that way.
There's a few differentvariations that you can do on
that.
Is deloading necessary?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
That would be very outsidefactors in terms of what your
pull work is.
I tend to put most of mymasters guys in some kind of
deload at some point.
Is it every four weeks?
Probably not, because thechange that we have every four
(14:27):
weeks often adds enough of achange that we're not
overloading that specificadaptation.
Um, so, for example, if we did,if we're at the start of the
year because these are allseasonally dependent questions
that we're asking ourselves aswell we may go for an increase
in intensity through increasingthe time under tension or the
(14:49):
amount of the duration that weare holding an isometric load
for, or something like that, andthe load that we put under that
isometric.
So we'll just go one of thosethings.
Then we might go okay, well,now we want to increase the
volume of that.
So we're going to do an extraset and then we're going to do
you know, we're going to addfive seconds to that that
isometric hold each week.
However, we want to do it.
(15:10):
We just want to see some kindof steady progression, and
you'll probably know when you'veovershot it because you won't
be able to do it, and that'swhen you just reel it back.
Danielle Spurling (15:19):
I will generally go if you overshoot,
go two weeks back and giveyourself two comfortable reps in
the tank and and and go fromthere again so, with an
isometric exercise like that andwe were talking about the
shoulder, for instance, as a bitof a test case what would be an
isometric or what would be someisometric exercises that people
could look at?
(15:39):
Would be like a hang, or wouldit be, um, like a weight to hold
or what kind of things.
Ryan Evernden (15:45):
We'll say body weight, to assume that some
people may not have gym access.
So you have plenty of isometrichold.
Isometrics are great when youdon't have anything to use and
they're great when you do have alot of stuff to use as well.
But a hang if you havesomething just to hang on to and
then really not doing a loosehang.
So we have two different types.
We not doing a loose hang, sowe have two different types.
(16:06):
We go for a loose hang and thena dip and like a attention hang
, I guess.
So arms above your head,hanging on to something, feet
off the ground, and then pullyour shoulders down, really feel
that lat you should.
It should look like yourshoulders are at their normal
height.
So if you weren't hanging andyou're walking around where your
(16:26):
shoulders are, then that's whatwe're kind of looking for,
because obviously when you hangupside down, your first
intention is going to be thoseshoulders lift up to your ears.
So you just got to pull thoseback down so they're nice and
flat and then go from there.
That would be where I'd want tohear it.
Feel it.
You'll start feeling that inyour lats, you'll start feeling
your pec, your upper back andall those things.
You will feel it in your handsas well, because we're obviously
doing a lot of grip strengththere.
(16:48):
But a hang is a really great one.
It requires not a lot and it'svery easy to manipulate and
improve and progress over time.
Um, so if you start, even ifyou start at like five seconds,
you can just go.
Okay, well, we're just going toincrease one second until we
get to x number Like.
Even if you do like, I thinkpeople want to jump too much as
(17:09):
well.
So I think everyone's going tostart at like 30 seconds and
then assume they're going to goto 45, where that's actually, if
we take our 10% rule, that's ahuge increase.
Danielle Spurling (17:19):
Yeah.
Ryan Evernden (17:20):
And that can be done.
But if you're very weak tostart off with, take the
advantage of momentum.
Do a five-second hang, thennext week do a six-second hang
and do a seven-second hang andkeep going, because momentum is
going to be your friend, becauseyou're not going to build up
these mental blocks aroundcertain exercises, like a hang
(17:41):
or a pull-up or anything likethat, and just get stuck.
What's a big issue that a lotof people have.
So just be really focused on.
I want to make the smallestgains possible consistently, and
that will make you so muchbetter.
You know, if you did that, ifyou did one second for a year,
you're already 52 seconds faster, better than you were before.
(18:03):
So if you started at five,you've made it to a minute.
Congratulations, you're in agood place.
A really strict dead hangthat's pretty good.
Right, you could probably haveincreased the speed somewhere
along the line there that yougot there, but if that was what
you got, that's still a reallygood result.
Um, another one that you can dois um, say a wty.
(18:24):
I hold.
These are just, you know, lyingflat down on your flat down.
A w position would be.
We'll start with a t.
That's probably the easiest wayto do this succinctly arms out
wide, so directly out from yourshoulders, as wide as you can go
, and then just lift them offthe ground.
I like to tell people to turnyour thumbs up because it
(18:45):
externally rotates the shouldera little bit for them, because
otherwise people just startdumping forwards and that's not
what we're after.
So we want to just thumbs upand then lift the shoulder up.
Make sure you're lifting theshoulder, not the hand, because
people with a lot of mobilitywill just lift their hand up and
dump their shoulder forwards.
So make sure it's shoulder liftup and the hand follows the
shoulder.
(19:05):
So make sure it's shoulder liftup and the hand follows the
shoulder.
You don't need to have yourhand up super high.
It's actually better if it'sjust off the ground, if your
shoulder's back and that's thesame for all the next couple
that we're going for.
From the T position you can thengo to a W position.
What is?
Just bending the elbow, keepingthe thumb up, and we're looking
(19:26):
to keep the elbow and the wristat the same height.
That's the external rotationthere.
A Y position is just you know,if you're going to do the YMCA,
the YMCA it's the Y positionokay, and then an I position
would just be directly up aboveyour head.
Don't hold your hands, becauseone side will compensate for the
(19:48):
other side and then we're notgetting equal footing.
Yes, that would be anotherreally good one that works
really well.
And the one that also reallyworks well and a lot of people
hate and it's very hard is anisometric push-up.
So this is right at the bottomof the push-up, it's not at the
top.
That would just be a tall plank, just be a tall plank.
The reason the isometricpush-up is good when done well
(20:08):
is because if you're pullingyour shoulders back and holding
that shoulder position whiledoing your push-up position,
you're going to get a lot ofvery a lot of pressure on that
shoulder with a lot of very goodisometric tension in the right
places that you want it to.
The problem is with the push-upthat not a lot of people are
strong enough for it and theytheir shoulders dump forwards
and we lose that that positionthat we would like.
(20:30):
So for that one, I alwaysrecommend you start on the floor
, you don't start on the bottomand come down for the push-up.
You start lying down, you putyour hands in the right position
, you squeeze your butt and thenjust push yourself just off the
floor, literally as as far offthe floor as you can like
tiniest amount off the floor youcan do and then squeeze your
(20:50):
shoulder blades together andhold that position Again.
Start with like two seconds ifyou have to.
I'm sure everyone can mentallyget themselves to two seconds
most likely.
If you can't, that's absolutelyfine.
Go to an incline variation ofit and work your way down the
incline so you get morehorizontal as you go and then
you'll be at horizontal and youcan work your way on loading
(21:11):
that oh, they're all great,great examples with isometric
exercises like that.
Danielle Spurling (21:17):
Is that something that you keep in your
program for the whole season ordo you sort of stagger that out?
You start with it more, with amore isometric, and then move
into other strength work well,there's.
Ryan Evernden (21:29):
Technically, if we want to get all all nerdy
about it, there's two differenttypes of isometrics.
So the ones that I justexplained to you would be
yielding isometrics.
So that would be ones whereyou're trying to resist yourself
from falling, like from losingposition.
Um, they would be more of anexample of the ones that I use
early in this season, um, tobuild that stability and build
(21:50):
that, that really strongconnection points that we, that
we're talking about.
Specific for this um, we've gotovercoming isometrics as well.
What are more?
Um, you keep those very shortbecause they're like try to lift
the.
If you say you've got a squatrack, you'll set your your bar
up underneath the hooks and tryand lift the.
If you say you've got a squatrack, you'll set your your bar
up underneath the hooks and tryand lift the squat rack out the
ground, what's obviously nothappening when it's bolted down.
(22:11):
But the idea is to generate asmuch force as possible in a
short period of time and thenexpress that force afterwards.
Um, what's different?
So there's obviously twodifferent types of that.
Um, the ones we just talkedabout, the yielding ones.
I like to keep those moregeneral and less swimming.
Specific, the overcoming onesbecause of the nature of them.
(22:31):
We keep those very specific, sothey become very specific.
So we actually put people incatch positions, we put them in
kicking positions, all of thosekind of things.
For those ones, um, block startpositions, we really get
specific with the angles there.
But for the the purpose of whatwe're probably talking about
here, of getting technical gainsin your swimming, I would
(22:52):
probably stick away from thoseones.
Let's not try and make yourselfget a specific thing when you
can't even do it in the wateryet.
If that makes sense, what's a?
You know, an underlyingprinciple of this whole thing is
, like you know, there is nopoint trying to train something
if you can't even freaking getyourself in the right position
to train it properly.
Because, again, you, you'rejust teaching your body
(23:13):
incorrect patterns.
What?
And?
The more you teach a pattern,the harder it is to undo.
So that would be for anotherpodcast, probably more towards
the summer.
Danielle Spurling (23:23):
Yeah, just booking myself, yeah absolutely
just promoting the fourthpodcast yeah, there's one coming
, guys.
Ryan Evernden (23:32):
It's going to be on an isometric.
Danielle Spurling (23:34):
You don't even understand we'll be back
with ryan after this short break.
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(23:57):
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(24:19):
to our content all the time.
Now back to Ryan.
How about putting in thingslike plyometrics and explosive
movements alongside thetraditional strength sort of
work that people do?
Can that help with the range ofmotion and stability?
Ryan Evernden (24:35):
Yeah, so I mean 100%.
There's a lot of very good.
So what we're really talkingabout here is like loading
tendons and tendons.
Like you know, there's a fewways that we want to load
tendons.
We can do it like isometricallyfor that more like stability
aspect of things and holding ofpositions and all those things,
and then plymetrically for thespringiness, like to make you
(24:59):
more springy, to build that moreexplosiveness.
So with that, you know, again,it's very dependent on what time
of year you're in and whatyou're looking to do.
Realistically, everything at theend of the day is determined by
the adaptation that you'retrying to achieve.
So if we are trying to achievean overhead stability thing,
(25:23):
adaptation, I will probably belooking more towards stuff like
your low amplitude plyometricsfor upper body and lower body.
Um, what would be morecontinuous um efforts, not just
your maximal jump springs,bounce kind of things, um.
(25:43):
So to keep it more on topicabout the overarching concept of
the podcast, we'd probably talkmore about the low amp stuff.
That would be your hopping,your continuous hopping, your um
, your pogos, what's justjumping up and down on the spot,
um, and those moreplyometrically inclined
(26:04):
exercises like that, the upperbody ones, are interesting and
this is something that, like youknow, in a world that is not
very prone to want to work withswimmers, no one's.
There's not a lot ofexploration in this um, but we
have done a fair bit becausethat's what we work with as soon
as so, one that we really like.
And this is depending on if youhave overhead head range of
(26:25):
motion first.
That would be your first point,because if you don't have it
like we've talked about, if youdon't have it, don't do it wrong
, you know.
So once you've got your range ofmotion and you're working on
the stability and strengthaspect, there's an overhead ball
throw that we like to do.
So it's over arms, above head.
Get as close to the wall as youpossibly can.
You want a ball that's got alittle bit of bounce to it and
(26:48):
then you want to throw the ballinto the wall and, as quickly as
you possibly can, throw it intothe wall and you're not
realistically going to losecontact with this thing at any
one time because you're so close.
The bounce of the ball is goingto push your arm back and then
you're going to rapidly try toget back onto it and you're
going to do that for an extendedperiod of time.
(27:08):
20 to 30 seconds is generallywhere we kind of leave it.
We have gone a little bitlonger, but that's kind of you
know where we like to hang outand that's just about you
expressing your force intosomething, getting the rebound
and having to reflect that forceback in a rapid way.
And that's a single-arm one youdo and then you do the other
(27:29):
double arm I have I don't thinkthe coordination skills are
quite there in swimming to do itsingle arm.
I'll definitely be doing bothhands on the ball and doing it
that way you've got both handson on the side of the ball, like
that you can't see.
It's a podcast I'm doing foranyone listening.
I'm doing the actions as I'mtalking.
So, but for you guys listening,you'd put your hands above your
head.
You'll have your hands oneither side of the ball and
(27:50):
you'd throw it with your handson the side of the ball the
whole time.
That way it's.
It's it's very much going tokeep left and right doing what
they want to do, instead ofoverloading one to the other.
If you can do it single arm,I'd love to see it.
So please feel free to send mea.
Tag me.
Swimmingstrong is my Instagramhandle.
Just giving myself anothercheap plug while we're here.
(28:11):
Tag me in and I'll definitelyreshare it.
I'd love to see a single-armone.
Danielle Spurling (28:17):
The challenge is out there for everyone to do
a single-arm, one A single-armcontinuous overhead ball throw.
Ryan Evernden (28:21):
That would be excellent to see.
We've got others that you cando as well.
You can do some where you'relying down and that is very much
like trying to bounce a balloff the floor.
But you know, you couldprobably do it on a like on a
bosu ball.
Um, that would probably be amore appropriate way to do it.
But you've got to get the, thelevels right, because you don't
want to be out of position, soyou'd want to be at an even
(28:44):
level to the bosu ball.
So it requires a fair bit ofyou know, of preparation, of
setup and then of actuallygetting it into the right
position.
Then you can, you could move itall the way through the, the
different ranges of the shoulderthat way.
But we tend to keep it simplewith the overhead one, um.
The other one that we like todo is would be a a banded
(29:06):
tantrum overhead, overheadbanded tantrum.
And there's also what would belying.
You can do it lying or kneeling.
You set the bands up across arig and if you can picture a
baby chucking a tantrum withtheir arms going up and down, up
and down, up and down, that isliterally it.
You stick your arms on the bandand you just go absolutely nuts
on it.
Keep yourself as long aspossible, don't start shortening
(29:29):
up Long as possible and thenjust bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang.
Same principle as the overheadball throw.
We want to hit it as hard as wecan and then react as quickly,
as fast as we can for a timeperiod, but then we go from
there.
Danielle Spurling (29:42):
Do you put your hands in the middle of the
band or on top of the band?
Ryan Evernden (29:49):
I've done both.
I've found that a lot of thetime the band strength might not
be strong enough.
If you go in between, okay, andif you go with the double on
top, you can smack it and theforce that is coming off the
band that you have to then reactto you've still got that there.
So there's still that elasticquality of you having to resist
(30:12):
the force that's being generatedup.
So I found that the double band, like doing it on top of the
band and just having the powerof both bands, is good.
But then again, we've done itwith both and we've just doubled
the bands up for some people aswell, but that was I would.
I would say that's moreprogressed, if that makes sense.
Danielle Spurling (30:31):
I think that would be more of a progression
rather than anything else yeah,because then you're getting some
band on both sides of yourhands, aren't you?
Ryan Evernden (30:37):
so yeah, you are, but you're also taking away
from it, or're trying to get thetendon to do it itself and
allowing the band to do it.
I generally prefer having justthe band underneath the hands
and you having to resist andreact to the force.
Danielle Spurling (30:53):
Yeah, that makes sense.
What are your thoughts on?
Like?
I always think of this as anexplosive exercise overhead med
ball slam a ball with a bit ofbounce so it's coming back to
waist height for you to grab,but where you've got it above
your head with two and slammingit down love it.
Ryan Evernden (31:11):
So this is, this is great.
This is probably the end stageof your tech like of how we
could transfer this techniqueacross um.
So once we've got the, if we goback to the start, we've got
the range of motion, we've gotthe stability, you'd be able to
strengthen it.
So if we stay in the overheadpull motion say, we've got
overhead range of motion, we cannow centrate in a hang position
.
We've now developed a pull-upposition so we can go from long
(31:32):
to short and and display force.
Then this would be the nextstage of that.
What's doing it at velocity?
The faster you move, the harderstuff becomes to get right, if
that makes sense.
So if you're in the waterswimming, you could probably do
the technique correctly at nospeed, but when you start to go
fast it falls apart.
Same kind of principle here.
So we've started with, you know, range of motion, ticked back
(31:55):
over to the stability aspect ofit was would be the dead hang
holding it.
So that's the isometric hittingup the, the pull up, and making
sure that we look before weengage the pull up.
We manage to pull the shouldersback down, centrate that joint
and then pull yourself up toengage the lats properly and
then, once we can get that witha bit of load on it, we probably
go to the bull throw down wherewe can try and get it more
(32:20):
specific.
To the catch pull position now,when I'm doing this, I tend not
to tell people to to the catchpool position.
Now, when I'm doing this, Itend not to tell people to
visualize the catch poolposition, what we do instead,
because I don't like peopletrying to be swimmers outside of
the wall, but we want to get asclose as possible for
specificity reasons and transferreasons.
So what we then do is go, okay,what we'll do is put the arm
(32:41):
above your head and, instead ofthem to like throw it down, I
tell them to roll the hand overthe top of the ball, what will
naturally get them to get thathand position over and elbow
starting to come up nice andhigh and then accelerate through
for the slam.
That way it's a bit moreactually getting.
They generally get it better.
(33:02):
Because what people are going todo if you tell them just to
throw the ball down?
They generally just have it atthe top, pull the elbow down the
ball and just follow throughthat way.
This way create the momentumwith the ball, like, like if
you're swimming.
Swimming is a sport that is notdone stationary.
There's generally momentum withyou at all times you use the
(33:23):
momentum that you already haveas you're going through the
water.
So if we're thinking about theball, we're using the momentum
of the ball, rolling off yourhand, rolling down your hand as
your fingers are coming over thetop of it, what naturally gets
your elbow to come up, yourshoulder to come down into that
centrated, stabilized position,and then we can follow through
and pull all the way down.
(33:44):
I do that generally with a deadball because I'm terrified of
people getting smacked back inthe face when it follows through
.
Danielle Spurling (33:53):
Yeah, so obviously then you reach down,
grab it, go again.
Ryan Evernden (33:57):
And reset.
Remember, if you're doingsomething explosive, you want to
do it explosive.
You don't want to do somethingexplosive where you actually end
up just doing it continuouslyfor an aerobic effect.
Danielle Spurling (34:12):
Yeah.
Ryan Evernden (34:12):
Does that make sense?
So I like the dead, because itforces people to stop and it
makes them pick it back up andthen they reset the position and
then they get the positionright again and we build this
pattern consistently over timerather than just going.
I'm assuming that you're goingto get the positioning right,
I'm assuming that you're goingto be able to do it and then
(34:34):
just continually going at it,because they're going to do that
in the water anyway becausethey don't have time to set,
reset.
So what we can do with thistechnical way of thinking about
it, we can pick the ball up, putit above our head, roll the
hand over, get the elbownaturally coming up because
that's what the mechanics ofyour hand is going to dictate to
your elbow and then throwingdown, then resetting and doing
(34:56):
it again and building a pattern.
So when we do get in the waterand we do see some technical
changes and you do startimplementing those drills
because I'm not saying thatdrills aren't important and I'm
not saying video analysis isn'timportant for underwater filming
and stuff like that I'm justsaying that you need to be able
to have the capability to makethe change before you can
actually make the change, whatseems pretty logical to me, and
(35:18):
then they'll actually be able touse these drills and use that
field, but they've already got abaseline pattern that they can
recognize as the movementbecause they've done it on land.
What is, for most humans, Iknow, a more familiar
environment for us to be able tofeel what I feel, see and
understand what's actually goingon yeah, all, all, just such
(35:38):
fantastic advice for everyonelistening.
Danielle Spurling (35:40):
And when we, when we started talking, you
were talking about, obviously,working from the centre of the
body or proximal out to thedistal.
What I'm always interested inwith swimming is that a lot of
people think about the straightplane and when we're in the
water and we're swimming, we'reactually rotating and we're
moving parts of our body so thatwe stabilise in the water.
(36:01):
What on land can people work onto address that sort of
rotation, so that, obviously,when you're reaching out in
freestyle with your left arm,your right foot is going down,
so you need to be able to moveso that you don't snake through
the water?
What can they do for that kindof stabilisation?
Ryan Evernden (36:20):
Yeah, so again, we start with breathing.
That's the first place.
Breathing is the greatest andmost underrated core exercise
that anyone's ever done and noone will ever admit to, apart
from me on this podcast andprobably some other people, just
to contradict everything I justsaid in one sentence.
But you start with breathing,if you can stress this enough.
(36:41):
Breathing is not just yougetting air into your body.
It is a skill that can allowyou to hold your trunk together.
It can help you regulate youremotions, it can help you
release muscles.
So get good at breathing andother things become a lot easier
for you.
Not saying you have to becomeWindhoff and control your body
(37:02):
temperature with the power ofthe breath, but it becomes a lot
easier if you can just get somebasic breathing mechanics and
learn that skill.
So start there.
Um, then we're.
Then we're looking atrealistically.
What we're looking at here isbeing able to maintain the
position of the trunk while weuse our limbs to generate force.
So what happens happens here isyou know, everything has action
(37:25):
and reaction.
So if you put your hand in thewater up here, there is a force
that is going to have to bereacted to the entire way
through your body and somethingis going to go, something is
going to have to balance thatout.
So when we put our hand andthis is what you'll see a lot of
people when they're justsnaking around the pool they put
their hand.
And this is what you'll see alot of people when they're just
snaking around the pool they puttheir hand in and they press
(37:46):
out and their hip goes all theway up to the other side.
Okay, so what we need to do interms of rotation and stuff like
that, we've got to think okay,well, if we're thinking about
rotation, we want to kind ofalmost keep the hips relatively
fixed where we can allow thetrunk to move around, get
position fix and go.
So we have that band and chainkind of activity going on.
(38:07):
So with that again, mobilitystart.
So if we just take the samesystem, we apply it across, you
need to be able to have therange of motion to be able to
get this right to start off with.
So you need to be able toactually get the rotational
demands that you want.
60 degrees of rotation is okay.
(38:29):
That would be your baseline ofbeing okay.
We're in a good position here.
I tend to try and push for 70with my guys just so we have it,
if we can get it.
But 60 is good.
So if you get 60 degrees ofrotation in your trunk, we're
happy.
We'll try and get to 70.
If you're going past 70 you'reprobably doing something really
weird and we don't need that.
(38:49):
You probably want to just getmore stable.
Once you have that range, thenwe need to work on ways that we
can resist forces being actedupon your trunk.
So this is our anti-rotation,anti-lateral flexion exercises.
So a pile-off press would be agreat example of this, where
(39:11):
you've got a band, it's coming90 degrees out from your hand
and you've got to hold thatfixed position.
Then you can go for all theprogressions of the pile-off
press, like you start with thebrace, you go to the press, then
you go to get it above yourhead and all the different ways
and variations that that goes.
That would be my next stage.
And then it will be about tryingto do it in terms of movement.
(39:33):
So chopping movements,rotational movements with bands
or cables before we get to ourthrowing.
So see how this system appliesacross.
We've got range of motion,we've managed to stabilize and
isolate the thing that needs tostay still and build that
stability.
We are then teaching it how tomove through chains and using
(39:56):
the cable machines, keeping hipsfixed.
Try to keep your hips in thesame position and rotate your
shoulders around, and then wecan go to go.
All right, let's go fast onthis, let's put some power down,
and that's where you can throwa ball into the thing.
Try and keep the hips fixed,because the more velocity you
add, the more complex it becomesand the harder it comes for
(40:17):
your body to handle.
So that's why that progressionreally works quite well for that
.
Danielle Spurling (40:22):
Yeah, I love that.
I think it's a part of swimmingthat people forget to work on,
and I think that it's a weaknessthat a lot of swimmers have,
especially master swimmers.
Ryan Evernden (40:35):
Yeah, I think a lot of the issues that come from
master swimming is just as youget older, you naturally get
siffer yeah true.
The less you use, the less.
Like you know, if you don'tmove it you lose it, whatever
the old phrase is.
So we've got to get you, we'vegot to get, and everyone just is
(40:55):
in a forward and backwardslifestyle.
Like you move forwards, youmove backwards.
Like swimming is the samealmost, it's just you know, it's
very similar plane of motion.
There's no, there's no emphasison on going sideways, there's
no emphasis on rotation in dailylife and stuff like that.
So we, we adapt to the body isgoing to adapt to what we give
(41:17):
it.
So I think a lot of people inthere, and especially in
strength and conditioningprograms for swimming, tend to
focus on the stuff that theythink are going to be the
specific things, so pull-ups,all of those things that are
important Obviously they'reimportant, and they forget that
creating a body that is capableof doing a lot of things is
(41:40):
going to give those attributes,those strengths, even more
strength, because you're goingto bring up the weaknesses, so
the strengths don't have tocompensate for the weaknesses
anymore.
So I think, like you know, evenour breaststrokers do rotation
work and breaststrokerealistically doesn't need
rotation.
The we do it because a theythey do a lot of their aerobic
work in freestyle and they'll doa lot of their recovery work in
(42:04):
freestyle and B.
It's good for them.
Like them, being able to rotatea bit more is good for them.
Like it opens up, it stopsstiffness through hips and back
and all these other things thatwe need to work on.
So it's great to know what thestroke archetype is and building
a program around that to makesure that they're getting the
(42:26):
best performance possible.
But at the end of the day, themain role of a strength coach
for swimmers is to keep themswimming and increasing the
capacity that they have to getbetter in the water.
That's what we're here for, anda lot of people just jump
straight to the performance sideof things when, if they're
focused on just keeping peoplein the performance side of
things, when, if they focused onjust keeping people in the
(42:46):
water.
And what do we need to do to dothat?
Balance out.
Balance out the weaknesses.
They're going to haveweaknesses.
We're not going to eradicateweaknesses it's not what we're
saying here but we just don'twant them to be so weak in
certain areas that theirstrengths are neglected because
they're compensating for thoseweaknesses all the time, like it
just needs to be at the baselevel that is acceptable, and
(43:07):
then we can make sure thestrengths are super strong.
If you just did that, you'd getway more out of it than just
trying to go okay, we need tomake them better at vertical
pulling yeah, absolutely.
Danielle Spurling (43:17):
I mean, everything that you've touched
on today is just so pertinent toeveryone that listens to this
show, because I think we focusso much on what we're doing in
the water and we've got a lot offaults in that in our own
things.
I know that recently I've beentrying out those little EO
handsets and I've got a lot ofproblems with force that I'm not
(43:41):
pushing in the right directionand I'm losing force as I go and
early vertical forearm.
But part of that is my range ofmotion in my shoulder because
you know, a few years ago I hada bit of bursitis.
So I've got to think aboutdoing that on land first, as you
say that's why it really hithome when I saw that post and
then transferring that into thewater and thinking about how
(44:03):
that's going to work, becausethen I'll be able to get my
shoulder into a better positionand I'll be able to get the
catch the right way yeah, you'llactually get onto catch
position and, like this is a.
Ryan Evernden (44:13):
This is a thing that happens a lot and
especially, you know, this is amaster's swimming podcast
predominantly, so it's easy toreference the masters and
they're prime candidates forthis topic.
Anyway, you know, I don't knowmany master swimmers who haven't
had issues in their shouldersat some point or haven't had
issues somewhere in some point.
And what happens when we haveum issues or injuries or your
(44:35):
pain in certain areas is ourbody then goes to protect that
area and by shutting that areadown.
I don't know many injuries,apart from tears, where you get
more range of motion andafterwards, and even in tears,
the body will lock that, lockeverything down to protect the
tear.
So you know, I don't and thatbecomes the response and the
(44:56):
pattern that is developedneurologically in the brain.
We go, it starts going okay,well, this hurts.
What do we do?
Tighten it up, resist.
We don't want to go into that.
It becomes scary.
We don't want that.
So we've got to be able to openit up in more comfortable areas
, such as on land, and get therange there and teach it that
(45:17):
it's okay and and reinforcepatterns that way before it's
going to trust it doing thething that hurt it at the start
of everything anyway.
So it's great that you mentionedyour bursitis, because that
gives me an easy way to talkabout it is.
Bursitis is a killer for a lotof people, because the way that
(45:37):
you're going to get rid of abursitis is through rest,
because it's the inflammation ofa cat like somewhere in the
joint.
So you have to let thatinflammation go down before you
can start implementing the load.
But what happens is and a lotof the time, this is what what
I've seen and in my experienceI'm obviously not my I'm not a
physio, so don't take this asprescriptions or anything like
that to people listening.
(45:58):
But what?
What we see a lot is they dothe deload and then they get
back into it and they progressup and then it's some like they
get to a point and it hurtsagain and it's.
They go oh, it's okay, I'vejust got to work through it a
little bit.
And they work through it alittle bit.
What makes it get more tightand more agitated instead of
(46:19):
going okay, we hit this level.
This is where our body wascomfortable.
Right now, let's do a tinydeload and just make it feel
good again, but we can keepswimming a little bit and then
we're going to push it a littlebit further and just taking that
more.
You know you can make fivesteps forwards and take two
steps back.
You've still gone three stepsforwards and you can.
You can continue to do thatover time and you're gonna make
(46:43):
progress.
No one's like it's that crazyimage of like.
You know, this is what my planwas and it's got the guy at the
start line and the finish line.
It's a direct line versus whatmy plan, what what actually
ended up happening.
It's like squiggles everywhereand you know it goes down the
cliff, up a cliff, around acorner, you know, ends up like
falling in a trap and then getsout of it and then finally makes
(47:04):
it.
You know it's never going to beas easy as just.
We start here and we're goingto finish there.
There's always going to besomething that pops up.
There's always going to besomething that we're going to
have to deal with and adapt fromand then move forwards.
But you know, just allowingpeople to be okay with that and
being very clear with them islike this is probably going to
(47:24):
happen.
We hope it doesn't, becausethat would be awesome, but it's
probably going to happen.
When it does happen, this iswhat we're going to do and these
are the reasons why, in adifferent topic entirely to this
question comes in is, you know,I've learned more about
(47:46):
convincing people to buy into aprogram through sell, through
sales, through sales calls, thanI ever did on gym floor,
because finding out what theyneed to do and then giving them
a reason and convincing themthat this is and explaining it
and giving them a pathway andall these different things is so
easy and makes life so mucheasier in the long run for these
(48:08):
people when they actually knowwhat might, what, all the
potential things are going tohappen without scaring them.
You know, like we've got togive them these, these
strategies to deal with thingswithout scaring people.
But that comes from honesty andbeing like this is going to
happen, but that's okay becausewe know at some point, if it
happens, we can do this and it'sgoing to be okay.
(48:30):
And if that plan works doesn'twork, we've got this plan and
that's where you know, theexperience of having people that
work directly in the sport kindof really comes in and has that
aspect of of both side ofthings like I'm not on pool deck
that often anymore because I'vegot guys who are way better at
it and can be there more on pooldeck for me now.
But from the years of coaching,like you know juniors and
(48:53):
adults and stuff like that, andage groupers and and some open
you know it's really importantto kind of go this is how the
water works, this is how theland works.
How can we meet in the middleand make that team work to get
this person the result they'reafter?
And that's what this is allabout.
You know, keeping swimmersswimming for longer is
realistically what we should allbe aiming to do.
Danielle Spurling (49:16):
And that's exactly what everyone listening,
all our master swimmers, wantto be doing.
They want to be swimming wellinto their 90s.
Ryan Evernden (49:23):
Our program is fixed around the same.
We want to create swimmers forlife.
Danielle Spurling (49:26):
Well, ryan, thank you so much for joining us
on the podcast.
I mean, all your pearls ofwisdom are going to help so many
people and what we'll do iswe'll put a link to your website
in the show notes of today'sepisode and people can reach out
to you for more information andyou can work with them
individually if they would likethat.
So thank you so much 100%.
Ryan Evernden (49:49):
No worries, guys.
Thank you for having me againand I look forward to the next
time, whenever that may be.
Danielle Spurling (49:56):
Coming soon.
Ryan Evernden (49:57):
All right, thank you.
Danielle Spurling (50:00):
Okay, thanks, bye, take care bye.
Thanks for listening in totoday's episode.
Don't forget to check outRyan's website at
formidablestrengthcomau to getmore of his pearls of wisdom,
and follow him on Insta andFacebook at Swimming Strong.
Till next time, happy swimmingand bye for now.
Hello swimmers and welcome to another
episode of Torpedo Swim Talkpodcast.
I'm your host, DanielleSpurling, and each week we chat
to a master swimmer from aroundthe world about their swimming
journey.
Today I'm welcoming back to thepodcast three-time guest and a
favourite of the show, RyanEvernden.
Ryan is a former top-levelswimmer coach and strength and
(00:34):
conditioning guru.
He's talking with us todayabout the crux of what we, as
master swimmers, need to do withour strength training on land
before our technique, andtherefore our strength, speed
and efficiency, improves in thewater.
It's a simple but oftenneglected fact.
Let's hear from Ryan now as wesolve this dilemma we all face.
(00:56):
Hi Ryan, thanks for joining uson the podcast today.
Ryan Evernden (01:04):
Good to be back.
Danielle Spurling (01:05):
Yeah, it's great to have you back Now for
our listeners that haven't heardfrom you.
On the other two podcasts thatyou've been on with us, I've
been on two then You've been ontwo.
Ryan Evernden (01:15):
Am I the only third time, or has Andy got a
third time?
Danielle Spurling (01:19):
You are the only third time I do Woo, yay,
yay, the only third time, yay.
So you're a swim coach andstrength and conditioning guru
based in Perth, westernAustralia, and I wanted to get
you back on the podcast todiscuss a post that you put out
last week which really hit homefor me, and I just wanted to
(01:40):
read it out for everyone first,and then we'll have a chat about
it.
So you said many swimmers failto understand the hard truth
when it comes to improving theirtechnique in the water, and if
you're not able to get intoposition and stabilise yourself
out of the water, there's no waythat you're going to be able to
do it in the water.
So can you tell us what youmeant by that statement, because
(02:01):
I think it's really pertinent,particularly for master swimmers
.
Ryan Evernden (02:05):
Yeah.
So this realistically comesback to you know, something that
I've personally battled withover the years and I just see
popping up a lot and masters iswhere this probably pops up the
most is you know we have allthese guys doing, you know these
array of drills and stuff likethat, with technical
improvements, people doing youknow underwater filming, giving
(02:28):
people video analysis and allthat stuff's excellent.
But I feel like, and from whatwe've seen in our program, is
that people just don'tunderstand that if you're
physically not capable ofgetting into a position and
stabilizing that position, nomatter what video analysis you
do or the amount of drills thatyou do in the water, if you
(02:50):
don't have the physical capacityto do something, it doesn't
matter how many times you tellsomeone how to do it, they're
not able to do it.
Like if you can't get your andfreestyle is a prime example,
and I just for anyone who mightbe a breaststroker there's a
very good breaststroke example.
I can go through later as wellbut for freestyle or any of the
strokes, because they allrequire you to get your arm
(03:10):
above your head.
So if you're standing up andyou can't put your arm above
your head without your lowerback, compensating or there are
any other compensationmechanisms going on there just
you standing up best way to dothis, if you're at home
listening or you know where thatis to do it lying down on your
back with your feet planted onthe floor.
(03:31):
Put your arms up in front ofyou so they're facing the
ceiling, and just try and getyour thumbs to touch the floor
behind your head and see if yourlower back comes off the floor
or anything else comes off thefloor to try and make that
happen.
Or can you actually get therewithout any rotation of your
hand or anything like thathaving to take place?
If you can't get your arm aboveyour head, you're just, for
(03:51):
starters, you're just gonnaspend a lot of time not being
able to get into that high elbowcatch position that you're all
chasing, and I think that'ssomething that has been really
not emphasised enough,especially in the master's
swimming community.
There's so many and especiallywith this boom of master's
(04:13):
swimming and boom of open waterswimming that we're certainly
having in Perth at the moment, Ican see it across the country
and globally as well, especiallyin the master's communities and
globally as well, especially,as you know, in the masters
communities, like there's thisjust rampant neglect for the
(04:33):
amount of need that there is toget your, get yourself
physically able to do thesethings before you get in the
water.
Um, and it's.
It's something that you know,we've we've seen time and time
again at formidable um with ourclients that come see us, and
over and over again, we just wekeep trying to make this, this
point come through.
But with everything, it's athing that requires time, and I
(04:54):
was.
Actually, when I put that postup, I was very surprised with
the result that I got, the, thefeedback that came from that,
the amount of support thatactually came from that.
I was thinking that it might bea mildly controversial topic to
tell people to stop doingtechnical drills and start
focusing on how you'rephysically able to do things,
(05:14):
especially in the swimmingcommunity, but it seemed like
there was a lot of agreeancethere.
What's great to see.
Danielle Spurling (05:20):
Yeah, absolutely, and I mean to do
what you're saying.
You need to have a better rangeof motion or range of movement,
and you need to increase yourstrength and your stability.
So how does a master swimmer goabout increasing their range of
motion?
Ryan Evernden (05:40):
know one one cannot happen without the other.
And then the other one.
The second part of it isessential for maintaining and
actually achieving it.
So the first point is obviouslythe range of motion.
If you do not have the range ofmotion capacity to get yourself
into the position you need toget into to have the correct
(06:00):
biomechanical technique thateveryone's looking for in the
water, you're not gonna doesn'tmatter, like that's looking for.
In the water, you're not goingto, doesn't matter, like that's.
That's point one.
How you get there is a littlebit different, and it's not just
stretch, stretch for days, um.
But once you have that range ofmotion, the stability is what
you need, and that comes frombeing able to actually pull your
shoulder back into the joint,engage your lats properly and be
(06:23):
able to pull through the water.
The amount of swimmers that Iwork with that have never been
able to engage, that I've neverfelt their lats on while
swimming before is, is simplylike baffling to me, because if
you're doing a giant pool setand all you're feeling is like
an intense, um discomfort inyour shoulders and your lats,
(06:45):
you're not waking up with sorelats or pecs.
You have not used your lats orpecs enough, I don't think.
Or your loading needs toimprove.
Um, not saying that everyoneneeds to be sore after workouts,
but that would be a goodexample that people just don't
don't have.
And that's where the strengthside of things comes in.
So you need to be able to havethe strength to be able to
support the joint hold positionand then be able to deliver
(07:07):
whatever power you maybe mayhave.
And they're the two parts.
So, yeah, range of motion toget you there, and then
stability and strength to beable to actually apply whatever
you've currently got, orwhatever you're currently
building, to the water toactually have a meaningful
effect.
And to get back to how you canachieve that.
(07:29):
Range of motion is obviously,you know, mobility.
Work is key for that.
So, opening yourself up.
If we stay on the shoulder justfor argument's sake because
that's probably what most peoplelistening are going to be
having trouble with first thingyou need to do is assess your
breathing.
What is probably for a lot ofpeople going like why the hell
(07:49):
would we look at our breathingto assess our shoulder?
Your breathing mechanics comefrom your diaphragm, your rib
cage, all those things, andthese things are all connected.
So when we're working, we liketo work.
We have a rule we workproximally to distal, so we
always deal with the mostcentral thing first, because if
we fix the central thing a lotof the time, that can be the
(08:11):
root cause for everything else.
So we make sure we go centraland then we work our way out,
because if you try working yourway back in, you're generally
just going to be tripping overyourself on the path there.
So breathing mechanics is keybecause a lot of people are, you
know, breathing without gooddiaphragm use and stuff like
(08:31):
that.
So they keep all the all thetension up high and they breathe
into their shoulders and neckwhat creates, you know,
unnecessary tension, and andfatigue and fatigue is the main
one.
So what people don't realize iswhen things are feeling tired,
they're often very fatigued froma lot of use and that's what
creates the tension.
(08:52):
So they kind of lock up becausethey're very tired and then
when you try to use them,there's nothing left for them to
give.
So breathing is something thateveryone has to do and everyone
has to do all the time.
So that's where you need tostart, because if you're not
addressing that, you're notgoing to mobilize enough or
you're just going to keeprunning.
There's going to be this bigfeedback loop coming up.
(09:14):
You're going to get themobility, you're going to go
through a bit of training.
You're going to come back backdown to getting tight after,
whatever happens.
You get stressed or somethingor something, and then you're
going to be starting that cycleall over again.
So start there.
The next part in terms ofworking our way out would be
making sure that you have atleast 10 degrees of upper
(09:36):
thoracic mobility, so that isthe ability for you just to lift
your chest up without yourlower mid-back doing much work.
To keep it very simple, so wecan get it across on an audio
platform um, that will come froma lot of you know, extension
work for your upper back andthings like we call them a
(09:56):
peanut.
I'm not actually too sure whatthey are, but they're the spiky
balls that are kind of joinedtogether.
Okay, a nice little bit foryour um, for your spine to sit
on, sit that in between yourshoulder blades open up, push
your, push your arms out infront of you and then do some
that breathing thing that wetalked about before, and this is
why that's so important isbecause that's our key to
(10:17):
getting this mobility release.
Go through that breathing, andnow, when you're doing stuff
like stretching or mobility workin this traditional sense, we
want to make sure that we aren'tforcing anything, that we are
relaxing and we are creating anenvironment where your body
decides like thinks that it's nolonger something to be scared
(10:38):
of and it's desensitizing itfrom whatever's going on around
it, so that so that's really keyon that part.
And then there's breathing andagain that thoracic extension
and going from there To mobilizefurther.
We then move our way out to thescap and we make sure that we
can get full scapular range,because if we can't get the full
scapular range, we will not beable to open up the shoulder
(10:58):
joint itself.
And then you can start movingto the shoulder joints.
That would be like release workaround your lats, your pecs,
and then you can start moving tothe shoulder joints.
That would be like release workaround your lats, your pecs,
making sure that you can getyour elbow up into your head if
you have it across your shoulder.
That would hopefully be able torelease you into getting full
overhead range of motion.
And then, once you can do that,then we need to start the
(11:21):
strength training.
The strength training.
So a lot of isometric holds inthis part.
When you're in this earlyintervention stage of holding
your shoulder inside the capsuleand making sure that you're
really stabilizing under loadand don't be obviously progress
your load without being an idiot, you know.
(11:41):
Start light, but don't beafraid to progress.
A lot of people get a bitscared of putting a bit of load
on it and don't do thatprogression.
So don't be afraid to progress,but just do it in a sensible
way.
Um, if you're looking for avery easy way to do progression
no more than 10 per week I wasgoing to actually ask.
Danielle Spurling (12:02):
I was going to ask that because I don't
think a lot of master swimmersknow about overload and
obviously there's a lot ofdifferent things you can
overload.
You can overload the rep.
You can increase the reps, theresistance, the volume, the
frequency.
You can decrease the rest.
Would you, would you recommendthat they change one variable
each week?
(12:22):
yeah to overload and should theydo the same within?
So if they're increasing theirreps each week to overload and
should they do the same within,so if they're increasing their
reps each week a little bit,would they stay with that
variable or would they move toanother one to make it more
productive?
Ryan Evernden (12:36):
Yeah.
So this starts going into themurky waters of periodisation
and progressive overload, buteasy way to think about it if
you just keep it.
To keep it as simple aspossible, we have intensity,
volume and rest is probably thethree that we're going to go
with today.
Intensity would be the extraload that you're putting onto
something.
Volume would be your reps andyour sets and your rest would be
(12:59):
the amount of time you giveyourself to recover afterwards.
Now, rest can be quite aninteresting one because,
depending on the adaptation thatyou want to get, you're
obviously going to be changingyour, your rest period and stuff
like that.
So it can be a bit tricky withrest.
So if you're just going to keepit even more simple, stay with
your intensity and volume and Iwould probably look to chase one
(13:21):
adaptation at a time.
So if we so if we're having ablock, say you map out a
four-week block and you're going, okay, this four-week block, we
are going to look at increasingthe intensity over this
four-week block.
So you'd start at your baselevel, you'd increase, say 10%
or under.
If it's under, that's fine.
(13:41):
Increase 10% again, increase10% again And% again, and just
that linear way of progressing,especially if you're very new
can work really well if you'resomeone who's a bit more trained
or has a little bit morefatigue levels.
Maybe if you stretch it out toa five week block, you can go,
you know, base 10%, 10%, slightdeload, 10% and then continue on
(14:06):
that way.
There's a few differentvariations that you can do on
that.
Is deloading necessary?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
That would be very outsidefactors in terms of what your
pull work is.
I tend to put most of mymasters guys in some kind of
deload at some point.
Is it every four weeks?
Probably not, because thechange that we have every four
(14:27):
weeks often adds enough of achange that we're not
overloading that specificadaptation.
Um, so, for example, if we did,if we're at the start of the
year because these are allseasonally dependent questions
that we're asking ourselves aswell we may go for an increase
in intensity through increasingthe time under tension or the
(14:49):
amount of the duration that weare holding an isometric load
for, or something like that, andthe load that we put under that
isometric.
So we'll just go one of thosethings.
Then we might go okay, well,now we want to increase the
volume of that.
So we're going to do an extraset and then we're going to do
you know, we're going to addfive seconds to that that
isometric hold each week.
However, we want to do it.
(15:10):
We just want to see some kindof steady progression, and
you'll probably know when you'veovershot it because you won't
be able to do it, and that'swhen you just reel it back.
Danielle Spurling (15:19):
I will generally go if you overshoot,
go two weeks back and giveyourself two comfortable reps in
the tank and and and go fromthere again so, with an
isometric exercise like that andwe were talking about the
shoulder, for instance, as a bitof a test case what would be an
isometric or what would be someisometric exercises that people
could look at?
(15:39):
Would be like a hang, or wouldit be, um, like a weight to hold
or what kind of things.
Ryan Evernden (15:45):
We'll say body weight, to assume that some
people may not have gym access.
So you have plenty of isometrichold.
Isometrics are great when youdon't have anything to use and
they're great when you do have alot of stuff to use as well.
But a hang if you havesomething just to hang on to and
then really not doing a loosehang.
So we have two different types.
We not doing a loose hang, sowe have two different types.
(16:06):
We go for a loose hang and thena dip and like a attention hang
, I guess.
So arms above your head,hanging on to something, feet
off the ground, and then pullyour shoulders down, really feel
that lat you should.
It should look like yourshoulders are at their normal
height.
So if you weren't hanging andyou're walking around where your
(16:26):
shoulders are, then that's whatwe're kind of looking for,
because obviously when you hangupside down, your first
intention is going to be thoseshoulders lift up to your ears.
So you just got to pull thoseback down so they're nice and
flat and then go from there.
That would be where I'd want tohear it.
Feel it.
You'll start feeling that inyour lats, you'll start feeling
your pec, your upper back andall those things.
You will feel it in your handsas well, because we're obviously
doing a lot of grip strengththere.
(16:48):
But a hang is a really great one.
It requires not a lot and it'svery easy to manipulate and
improve and progress over time.
Um, so if you start, even ifyou start at like five seconds,
you can just go.
Okay, well, we're just going toincrease one second until we
get to x number Like.
Even if you do like, I thinkpeople want to jump too much as
(17:09):
well.
So I think everyone's going tostart at like 30 seconds and
then assume they're going to goto 45, where that's actually, if
we take our 10% rule, that's ahuge increase.
Danielle Spurling (17:19):
Yeah.
Ryan Evernden (17:20):
And that can be done.
But if you're very weak tostart off with, take the
advantage of momentum.
Do a five-second hang, thennext week do a six-second hang
and do a seven-second hang andkeep going, because momentum is
going to be your friend, becauseyou're not going to build up
these mental blocks aroundcertain exercises, like a hang
(17:41):
or a pull-up or anything likethat, and just get stuck.
What's a big issue that a lotof people have.
So just be really focused on.
I want to make the smallestgains possible consistently, and
that will make you so muchbetter.
You know, if you did that, ifyou did one second for a year,
you're already 52 seconds faster, better than you were before.
(18:03):
So if you started at five,you've made it to a minute.
Congratulations, you're in agood place.
A really strict dead hangthat's pretty good.
Right, you could probably haveincreased the speed somewhere
along the line there that yougot there, but if that was what
you got, that's still a reallygood result.
Um, another one that you can dois um, say a wty.
(18:24):
I hold.
These are just, you know, lyingflat down on your flat down.
A w position would be.
We'll start with a t.
That's probably the easiest wayto do this succinctly arms out
wide, so directly out from yourshoulders, as wide as you can go
, and then just lift them offthe ground.
I like to tell people to turnyour thumbs up because it
(18:45):
externally rotates the shouldera little bit for them, because
otherwise people just startdumping forwards and that's not
what we're after.
So we want to just thumbs upand then lift the shoulder up.
Make sure you're lifting theshoulder, not the hand, because
people with a lot of mobilitywill just lift their hand up and
dump their shoulder forwards.
So make sure it's shoulder liftup and the hand follows the
shoulder.
(19:05):
So make sure it's shoulder liftup and the hand follows the
shoulder.
You don't need to have yourhand up super high.
It's actually better if it'sjust off the ground, if your
shoulder's back and that's thesame for all the next couple
that we're going for.
From the T position you can thengo to a W position.
What is?
Just bending the elbow, keepingthe thumb up, and we're looking
(19:26):
to keep the elbow and the wristat the same height.
That's the external rotationthere.
A Y position is just you know,if you're going to do the YMCA,
the YMCA it's the Y positionokay, and then an I position
would just be directly up aboveyour head.
Don't hold your hands, becauseone side will compensate for the
(19:48):
other side and then we're notgetting equal footing.
Yes, that would be anotherreally good one that works
really well.
And the one that also reallyworks well and a lot of people
hate and it's very hard is anisometric push-up.
So this is right at the bottomof the push-up, it's not at the
top.
That would just be a tall plank, just be a tall plank.
The reason the isometricpush-up is good when done well
(20:08):
is because if you're pullingyour shoulders back and holding
that shoulder position whiledoing your push-up position,
you're going to get a lot ofvery a lot of pressure on that
shoulder with a lot of very goodisometric tension in the right
places that you want it to.
The problem is with the push-upthat not a lot of people are
strong enough for it and theytheir shoulders dump forwards
and we lose that that positionthat we would like.
(20:30):
So for that one, I alwaysrecommend you start on the floor
, you don't start on the bottomand come down for the push-up.
You start lying down, you putyour hands in the right position
, you squeeze your butt and thenjust push yourself just off the
floor, literally as as far offthe floor as you can like
tiniest amount off the floor youcan do and then squeeze your
(20:50):
shoulder blades together andhold that position Again.
Start with like two seconds ifyou have to.
I'm sure everyone can mentallyget themselves to two seconds
most likely.
If you can't, that's absolutelyfine.
Go to an incline variation ofit and work your way down the
incline so you get morehorizontal as you go and then
you'll be at horizontal and youcan work your way on loading
(21:11):
that oh, they're all great,great examples with isometric
exercises like that.
Danielle Spurling (21:17):
Is that something that you keep in your
program for the whole season ordo you sort of stagger that out?
You start with it more, with amore isometric, and then move
into other strength work well,there's.
Ryan Evernden (21:29):
Technically, if we want to get all all nerdy
about it, there's two differenttypes of isometrics.
So the ones that I justexplained to you would be
yielding isometrics.
So that would be ones whereyou're trying to resist yourself
from falling, like from losingposition.
Um, they would be more of anexample of the ones that I use
early in this season, um, tobuild that stability and build
(21:50):
that, that really strongconnection points that we, that
we're talking about.
Specific for this um, we've gotovercoming isometrics as well.
What are more?
Um, you keep those very shortbecause they're like try to lift
the.
If you say you've got a squatrack, you'll set your your bar
up underneath the hooks and tryand lift the.
If you say you've got a squatrack, you'll set your your bar
up underneath the hooks and tryand lift the squat rack out the
ground, what's obviously nothappening when it's bolted down.
(22:11):
But the idea is to generate asmuch force as possible in a
short period of time and thenexpress that force afterwards.
Um, what's different?
So there's obviously twodifferent types of that.
Um, the ones we just talkedabout, the yielding ones.
I like to keep those moregeneral and less swimming.
Specific, the overcoming onesbecause of the nature of them.
(22:31):
We keep those very specific, sothey become very specific.
So we actually put people incatch positions, we put them in
kicking positions, all of thosekind of things.
For those ones, um, block startpositions, we really get
specific with the angles there.
But for the the purpose of whatwe're probably talking about
here, of getting technical gainsin your swimming, I would
(22:52):
probably stick away from thoseones.
Let's not try and make yourselfget a specific thing when you
can't even do it in the wateryet.
If that makes sense, what's a?
You know, an underlyingprinciple of this whole thing is
, like you know, there is nopoint trying to train something
if you can't even freaking getyourself in the right position
to train it properly.
Because, again, you, you'rejust teaching your body
(23:13):
incorrect patterns.
What?
And?
The more you teach a pattern,the harder it is to undo.
So that would be for anotherpodcast, probably more towards
the summer.
Danielle Spurling (23:23):
Yeah, just booking myself, yeah absolutely
just promoting the fourthpodcast yeah, there's one coming
, guys.
Ryan Evernden (23:32):
It's going to be on an isometric.
Danielle Spurling (23:34):
You don't even understand we'll be back
with ryan after this short break.
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(23:57):
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(24:19):
to our content all the time.
Now back to Ryan.
How about putting in thingslike plyometrics and explosive
movements alongside thetraditional strength sort of
work that people do?
Can that help with the range ofmotion and stability?
Ryan Evernden (24:35):
Yeah, so I mean 100%.
There's a lot of very good.
So what we're really talkingabout here is like loading
tendons and tendons.
Like you know, there's a fewways that we want to load
tendons.
We can do it like isometricallyfor that more like stability
aspect of things and holding ofpositions and all those things,
and then plymetrically for thespringiness, like to make you
(24:59):
more springy, to build that moreexplosiveness.
So with that, you know, again,it's very dependent on what time
of year you're in and whatyou're looking to do.
Realistically, everything at theend of the day is determined by
the adaptation that you'retrying to achieve.
So if we are trying to achievean overhead stability thing,
(25:23):
adaptation, I will probably belooking more towards stuff like
your low amplitude plyometricsfor upper body and lower body.
Um, what would be morecontinuous um efforts, not just
your maximal jump springs,bounce kind of things, um.
(25:43):
So to keep it more on topicabout the overarching concept of
the podcast, we'd probably talkmore about the low amp stuff.
That would be your hopping,your continuous hopping, your um
, your pogos, what's justjumping up and down on the spot,
um, and those moreplyometrically inclined
(26:04):
exercises like that, the upperbody ones, are interesting and
this is something that, like youknow, in a world that is not
very prone to want to work withswimmers, no one's.
There's not a lot ofexploration in this um, but we
have done a fair bit becausethat's what we work with as soon
as so, one that we really like.
And this is depending on if youhave overhead head range of
(26:25):
motion first.
That would be your first point,because if you don't have it
like we've talked about, if youdon't have it, don't do it wrong
, you know.
So once you've got your range ofmotion and you're working on
the stability and strengthaspect, there's an overhead ball
throw that we like to do.
So it's over arms, above head.
Get as close to the wall as youpossibly can.
You want a ball that's got alittle bit of bounce to it and
(26:48):
then you want to throw the ballinto the wall and, as quickly as
you possibly can, throw it intothe wall and you're not
realistically going to losecontact with this thing at any
one time because you're so close.
The bounce of the ball is goingto push your arm back and then
you're going to rapidly try toget back onto it and you're
going to do that for an extendedperiod of time.
(27:08):
20 to 30 seconds is generallywhere we kind of leave it.
We have gone a little bitlonger, but that's kind of you
know where we like to hang outand that's just about you
expressing your force intosomething, getting the rebound
and having to reflect that forceback in a rapid way.
And that's a single-arm one youdo and then you do the other
(27:29):
double arm I have I don't thinkthe coordination skills are
quite there in swimming to do itsingle arm.
I'll definitely be doing bothhands on the ball and doing it
that way you've got both handson on the side of the ball, like
that you can't see.
It's a podcast I'm doing foranyone listening.
I'm doing the actions as I'mtalking.
So, but for you guys listening,you'd put your hands above your
head.
You'll have your hands oneither side of the ball and
(27:50):
you'd throw it with your handson the side of the ball the
whole time.
That way it's.
It's it's very much going tokeep left and right doing what
they want to do, instead ofoverloading one to the other.
If you can do it single arm,I'd love to see it.
So please feel free to send mea.
Tag me.
Swimmingstrong is my Instagramhandle.
Just giving myself anothercheap plug while we're here.
(28:11):
Tag me in and I'll definitelyreshare it.
I'd love to see a single-armone.
Danielle Spurling (28:17):
The challenge is out there for everyone to do
a single-arm, one A single-armcontinuous overhead ball throw.
Ryan Evernden (28:21):
That would be excellent to see.
We've got others that you cando as well.
You can do some where you'relying down and that is very much
like trying to bounce a balloff the floor.
But you know, you couldprobably do it on a like on a
bosu ball.
Um, that would probably be amore appropriate way to do it.
But you've got to get the, thelevels right, because you don't
want to be out of position, soyou'd want to be at an even
(28:44):
level to the bosu ball.
So it requires a fair bit ofyou know, of preparation, of
setup and then of actuallygetting it into the right
position.
Then you can, you could move itall the way through the, the
different ranges of the shoulderthat way.
But we tend to keep it simplewith the overhead one, um.
The other one that we like todo is would be a a banded
(29:06):
tantrum overhead, overheadbanded tantrum.
And there's also what would belying.
You can do it lying or kneeling.
You set the bands up across arig and if you can picture a
baby chucking a tantrum withtheir arms going up and down, up
and down, up and down, that isliterally it.
You stick your arms on the bandand you just go absolutely nuts
on it.
Keep yourself as long aspossible, don't start shortening
(29:29):
up Long as possible and thenjust bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang.
Same principle as the overheadball throw.
We want to hit it as hard as wecan and then react as quickly,
as fast as we can for a timeperiod, but then we go from
there.
Danielle Spurling (29:42):
Do you put your hands in the middle of the
band or on top of the band?
Ryan Evernden (29:49):
I've done both.
I've found that a lot of thetime the band strength might not
be strong enough.
If you go in between, okay, andif you go with the double on
top, you can smack it and theforce that is coming off the
band that you have to then reactto you've still got that there.
So there's still that elasticquality of you having to resist
(30:12):
the force that's being generatedup.
So I found that the double band, like doing it on top of the
band and just having the powerof both bands, is good.
But then again, we've done itwith both and we've just doubled
the bands up for some people aswell, but that was I would.
I would say that's moreprogressed, if that makes sense.
Danielle Spurling (30:31):
I think that would be more of a progression
rather than anything else yeah,because then you're getting some
band on both sides of yourhands, aren't you?
Ryan Evernden (30:37):
so yeah, you are, but you're also taking away
from it, or're trying to get thetendon to do it itself and
allowing the band to do it.
I generally prefer having justthe band underneath the hands
and you having to resist andreact to the force.
Danielle Spurling (30:53):
Yeah, that makes sense.
What are your thoughts on?
Like?
I always think of this as anexplosive exercise overhead med
ball slam a ball with a bit ofbounce so it's coming back to
waist height for you to grab,but where you've got it above
your head with two and slammingit down love it.
Ryan Evernden (31:11):
So this is, this is great.
This is probably the end stageof your tech like of how we
could transfer this techniqueacross um.
So once we've got the, if we goback to the start, we've got
the range of motion, we've gotthe stability, you'd be able to
strengthen it.
So if we stay in the overheadpull motion say, we've got
overhead range of motion, we cannow centrate in a hang position
.
We've now developed a pull-upposition so we can go from long
(31:32):
to short and and display force.
Then this would be the nextstage of that.
What's doing it at velocity?
The faster you move, the harderstuff becomes to get right, if
that makes sense.
So if you're in the waterswimming, you could probably do
the technique correctly at nospeed, but when you start to go
fast it falls apart.
Same kind of principle here.
So we've started with, you know, range of motion, ticked back
(31:55):
over to the stability aspect ofit was would be the dead hang
holding it.
So that's the isometric hittingup the, the pull up, and making
sure that we look before weengage the pull up.
We manage to pull the shouldersback down, centrate that joint
and then pull yourself up toengage the lats properly and
then, once we can get that witha bit of load on it, we probably
go to the bull throw down wherewe can try and get it more
(32:20):
specific.
To the catch pull position now,when I'm doing this, I tend not
to tell people to to the catchpool position.
Now, when I'm doing this, Itend not to tell people to
visualize the catch poolposition, what we do instead,
because I don't like peopletrying to be swimmers outside of
the wall, but we want to get asclose as possible for
specificity reasons and transferreasons.
So what we then do is go, okay,what we'll do is put the arm
(32:41):
above your head and, instead ofthem to like throw it down, I
tell them to roll the hand overthe top of the ball, what will
naturally get them to get thathand position over and elbow
starting to come up nice andhigh and then accelerate through
for the slam.
That way it's a bit moreactually getting.
They generally get it better.
(33:02):
Because what people are going todo if you tell them just to
throw the ball down?
They generally just have it atthe top, pull the elbow down the
ball and just follow throughthat way.
This way create the momentumwith the ball, like, like if
you're swimming.
Swimming is a sport that is notdone stationary.
There's generally momentum withyou at all times you use the
(33:23):
momentum that you already haveas you're going through the
water.
So if we're thinking about theball, we're using the momentum
of the ball, rolling off yourhand, rolling down your hand as
your fingers are coming over thetop of it, what naturally gets
your elbow to come up, yourshoulder to come down into that
centrated, stabilized position,and then we can follow through
and pull all the way down.
(33:44):
I do that generally with a deadball because I'm terrified of
people getting smacked back inthe face when it follows through
.
Danielle Spurling (33:53):
Yeah, so obviously then you reach down,
grab it, go again.
Ryan Evernden (33:57):
And reset.
Remember, if you're doingsomething explosive, you want to
do it explosive.
You don't want to do somethingexplosive where you actually end
up just doing it continuouslyfor an aerobic effect.
Danielle Spurling (34:12):
Yeah.
Ryan Evernden (34:12):
Does that make sense?
So I like the dead, because itforces people to stop and it
makes them pick it back up andthen they reset the position and
then they get the positionright again and we build this
pattern consistently over timerather than just going.
I'm assuming that you're goingto get the positioning right,
I'm assuming that you're goingto be able to do it and then
(34:34):
just continually going at it,because they're going to do that
in the water anyway becausethey don't have time to set,
reset.
So what we can do with thistechnical way of thinking about
it, we can pick the ball up, putit above our head, roll the
hand over, get the elbownaturally coming up because
that's what the mechanics ofyour hand is going to dictate to
your elbow and then throwingdown, then resetting and doing
(34:56):
it again and building a pattern.
So when we do get in the waterand we do see some technical
changes and you do startimplementing those drills
because I'm not saying thatdrills aren't important and I'm
not saying video analysis isn'timportant for underwater filming
and stuff like that I'm justsaying that you need to be able
to have the capability to makethe change before you can
actually make the change, whatseems pretty logical to me, and
(35:18):
then they'll actually be able touse these drills and use that
field, but they've already got abaseline pattern that they can
recognize as the movementbecause they've done it on land.
What is, for most humans, Iknow, a more familiar
environment for us to be able tofeel what I feel, see and
understand what's actually goingon yeah, all, all, just such
(35:38):
fantastic advice for everyonelistening.
Danielle Spurling (35:40):
And when we, when we started talking, you
were talking about, obviously,working from the centre of the
body or proximal out to thedistal.
What I'm always interested inwith swimming is that a lot of
people think about the straightplane and when we're in the
water and we're swimming, we'reactually rotating and we're
moving parts of our body so thatwe stabilise in the water.
(36:01):
What on land can people work onto address that sort of
rotation, so that, obviously,when you're reaching out in
freestyle with your left arm,your right foot is going down,
so you need to be able to moveso that you don't snake through
the water?
What can they do for that kindof stabilisation?
Ryan Evernden (36:20):
Yeah, so again, we start with breathing.
That's the first place.
Breathing is the greatest andmost underrated core exercise
that anyone's ever done and noone will ever admit to, apart
from me on this podcast andprobably some other people, just
to contradict everything I justsaid in one sentence.
But you start with breathing,if you can stress this enough.
(36:41):
Breathing is not just yougetting air into your body.
It is a skill that can allowyou to hold your trunk together.
It can help you regulate youremotions, it can help you
release muscles.
So get good at breathing andother things become a lot easier
for you.
Not saying you have to becomeWindhoff and control your body
(37:02):
temperature with the power ofthe breath, but it becomes a lot
easier if you can just get somebasic breathing mechanics and
learn that skill.
So start there.
Um, then we're.
Then we're looking atrealistically.
What we're looking at here isbeing able to maintain the
position of the trunk while weuse our limbs to generate force.
So what happens happens here isyou know, everything has action
(37:25):
and reaction.
So if you put your hand in thewater up here, there is a force
that is going to have to bereacted to the entire way
through your body and somethingis going to go, something is
going to have to balance thatout.
So when we put our hand andthis is what you'll see a lot of
people when they're justsnaking around the pool they put
their hand.
And this is what you'll see alot of people when they're just
snaking around the pool they puttheir hand in and they press
(37:46):
out and their hip goes all theway up to the other side.
Okay, so what we need to do interms of rotation and stuff like
that, we've got to think okay,well, if we're thinking about
rotation, we want to kind ofalmost keep the hips relatively
fixed where we can allow thetrunk to move around, get
position fix and go.
So we have that band and chainkind of activity going on.
(38:07):
So with that again, mobilitystart.
So if we just take the samesystem, we apply it across, you
need to be able to have therange of motion to be able to
get this right to start off with.
So you need to be able toactually get the rotational
demands that you want.
60 degrees of rotation is okay.
(38:29):
That would be your baseline ofbeing okay.
We're in a good position here.
I tend to try and push for 70with my guys just so we have it,
if we can get it.
But 60 is good.
So if you get 60 degrees ofrotation in your trunk, we're
happy.
We'll try and get to 70.
If you're going past 70 you'reprobably doing something really
weird and we don't need that.
(38:49):
You probably want to just getmore stable.
Once you have that range, thenwe need to work on ways that we
can resist forces being actedupon your trunk.
So this is our anti-rotation,anti-lateral flexion exercises.
So a pile-off press would be agreat example of this, where
(39:11):
you've got a band, it's coming90 degrees out from your hand
and you've got to hold thatfixed position.
Then you can go for all theprogressions of the pile-off
press, like you start with thebrace, you go to the press, then
you go to get it above yourhead and all the different ways
and variations that that goes.
That would be my next stage.
And then it will be about tryingto do it in terms of movement.
(39:33):
So chopping movements,rotational movements with bands
or cables before we get to ourthrowing.
So see how this system appliesacross.
We've got range of motion,we've managed to stabilize and
isolate the thing that needs tostay still and build that
stability.
We are then teaching it how tomove through chains and using
(39:56):
the cable machines, keeping hipsfixed.
Try to keep your hips in thesame position and rotate your
shoulders around, and then wecan go to go.
All right, let's go fast onthis, let's put some power down,
and that's where you can throwa ball into the thing.
Try and keep the hips fixed,because the more velocity you
add, the more complex it becomesand the harder it comes for
(40:17):
your body to handle.
So that's why that progressionreally works quite well for that
.
Danielle Spurling (40:22):
Yeah, I love that.
I think it's a part of swimmingthat people forget to work on,
and I think that it's a weaknessthat a lot of swimmers have,
especially master swimmers.
Ryan Evernden (40:35):
Yeah, I think a lot of the issues that come from
master swimming is just as youget older, you naturally get
siffer yeah true.
The less you use, the less.
Like you know, if you don'tmove it you lose it, whatever
the old phrase is.
So we've got to get you, we'vegot to get, and everyone just is
(40:55):
in a forward and backwardslifestyle.
Like you move forwards, youmove backwards.
Like swimming is the samealmost, it's just you know, it's
very similar plane of motion.
There's no, there's no emphasison on going sideways, there's
no emphasis on rotation in dailylife and stuff like that.
So we, we adapt to the body isgoing to adapt to what we give
(41:17):
it.
So I think a lot of people inthere, and especially in
strength and conditioningprograms for swimming, tend to
focus on the stuff that theythink are going to be the
specific things, so pull-ups,all of those things that are
important Obviously they'reimportant, and they forget that
creating a body that is capableof doing a lot of things is
(41:40):
going to give those attributes,those strengths, even more
strength, because you're goingto bring up the weaknesses, so
the strengths don't have tocompensate for the weaknesses
anymore.
So I think, like you know, evenour breaststrokers do rotation
work and breaststrokerealistically doesn't need
rotation.
The we do it because a theythey do a lot of their aerobic
work in freestyle and they'll doa lot of their recovery work in
(42:04):
freestyle and B.
It's good for them.
Like them, being able to rotatea bit more is good for them.
Like it opens up, it stopsstiffness through hips and back
and all these other things thatwe need to work on.
So it's great to know what thestroke archetype is and building
a program around that to makesure that they're getting the
(42:26):
best performance possible.
But at the end of the day, themain role of a strength coach
for swimmers is to keep themswimming and increasing the
capacity that they have to getbetter in the water.
That's what we're here for, anda lot of people just jump
straight to the performance sideof things when, if they're
focused on just keeping peoplein the performance side of
things, when, if they focused onjust keeping people in the
(42:46):
water.
And what do we need to do to dothat?
Balance out.
Balance out the weaknesses.
They're going to haveweaknesses.
We're not going to eradicateweaknesses it's not what we're
saying here but we just don'twant them to be so weak in
certain areas that theirstrengths are neglected because
they're compensating for thoseweaknesses all the time, like it
just needs to be at the baselevel that is acceptable, and
(43:07):
then we can make sure thestrengths are super strong.
If you just did that, you'd getway more out of it than just
trying to go okay, we need tomake them better at vertical
pulling yeah, absolutely.
Danielle Spurling (43:17):
I mean, everything that you've touched
on today is just so pertinent toeveryone that listens to this
show, because I think we focusso much on what we're doing in
the water and we've got a lot offaults in that in our own
things.
I know that recently I've beentrying out those little EO
handsets and I've got a lot ofproblems with force that I'm not
(43:41):
pushing in the right directionand I'm losing force as I go and
early vertical forearm.
But part of that is my range ofmotion in my shoulder because
you know, a few years ago I hada bit of bursitis.
So I've got to think aboutdoing that on land first, as you
say that's why it really hithome when I saw that post and
then transferring that into thewater and thinking about how
(44:03):
that's going to work, becausethen I'll be able to get my
shoulder into a better positionand I'll be able to get the
catch the right way yeah, you'llactually get onto catch
position and, like this is a.
Ryan Evernden (44:13):
This is a thing that happens a lot and
especially, you know, this is amaster's swimming podcast
predominantly, so it's easy toreference the masters and
they're prime candidates forthis topic.
Anyway, you know, I don't knowmany master swimmers who haven't
had issues in their shouldersat some point or haven't had
issues somewhere in some point.
And what happens when we haveum issues or injuries or your
(44:35):
pain in certain areas is ourbody then goes to protect that
area and by shutting that areadown.
I don't know many injuries,apart from tears, where you get
more range of motion andafterwards, and even in tears,
the body will lock that, lockeverything down to protect the
tear.
So you know, I don't and thatbecomes the response and the
(44:56):
pattern that is developedneurologically in the brain.
We go, it starts going okay,well, this hurts.
What do we do?
Tighten it up, resist.
We don't want to go into that.
It becomes scary.
We don't want that.
So we've got to be able to openit up in more comfortable areas
, such as on land, and get therange there and teach it that
(45:17):
it's okay and and reinforcepatterns that way before it's
going to trust it doing thething that hurt it at the start
of everything anyway.
So it's great that you mentionedyour bursitis, because that
gives me an easy way to talkabout it is.
Bursitis is a killer for a lotof people, because the way that
(45:37):
you're going to get rid of abursitis is through rest,
because it's the inflammation ofa cat like somewhere in the
joint.
So you have to let thatinflammation go down before you
can start implementing the load.
But what happens is and a lotof the time, this is what what
I've seen and in my experienceI'm obviously not my I'm not a
physio, so don't take this asprescriptions or anything like
that to people listening.
(45:58):
But what?
What we see a lot is they dothe deload and then they get
back into it and they progressup and then it's some like they
get to a point and it hurtsagain and it's.
They go oh, it's okay, I'vejust got to work through it a
little bit.
And they work through it alittle bit.
What makes it get more tightand more agitated instead of
(46:19):
going okay, we hit this level.
This is where our body wascomfortable.
Right now, let's do a tinydeload and just make it feel
good again, but we can keepswimming a little bit and then
we're going to push it a littlebit further and just taking that
more.
You know you can make fivesteps forwards and take two
steps back.
You've still gone three stepsforwards and you can.
You can continue to do thatover time and you're gonna make
(46:43):
progress.
No one's like it's that crazyimage of like.
You know, this is what my planwas and it's got the guy at the
start line and the finish line.
It's a direct line versus whatmy plan, what what actually
ended up happening.
It's like squiggles everywhereand you know it goes down the
cliff, up a cliff, around acorner, you know, ends up like
falling in a trap and then getsout of it and then finally makes
(47:04):
it.
You know it's never going to beas easy as just.
We start here and we're goingto finish there.
There's always going to besomething that pops up.
There's always going to besomething that we're going to
have to deal with and adapt fromand then move forwards.
But you know, just allowingpeople to be okay with that and
being very clear with them islike this is probably going to
(47:24):
happen.
We hope it doesn't, becausethat would be awesome, but it's
probably going to happen.
When it does happen, this iswhat we're going to do and these
are the reasons why, in adifferent topic entirely to this
question comes in is, you know,I've learned more about
(47:46):
convincing people to buy into aprogram through sell, through
sales, through sales calls, thanI ever did on gym floor,
because finding out what theyneed to do and then giving them
a reason and convincing themthat this is and explaining it
and giving them a pathway andall these different things is so
easy and makes life so mucheasier in the long run for these
(48:08):
people when they actually knowwhat might, what, all the
potential things are going tohappen without scaring them.
You know, like we've got togive them these, these
strategies to deal with thingswithout scaring people.
But that comes from honesty andbeing like this is going to
happen, but that's okay becausewe know at some point, if it
happens, we can do this and it'sgoing to be okay.
(48:30):
And if that plan works doesn'twork, we've got this plan and
that's where you know, theexperience of having people that
work directly in the sport kindof really comes in and has that
aspect of of both side ofthings like I'm not on pool deck
that often anymore because I'vegot guys who are way better at
it and can be there more on pooldeck for me now.
But from the years of coaching,like you know juniors and
(48:53):
adults and stuff like that, andage groupers and and some open
you know it's really importantto kind of go this is how the
water works, this is how theland works.
How can we meet in the middleand make that team work to get
this person the result they'reafter?
And that's what this is allabout.
You know, keeping swimmersswimming for longer is
realistically what we should allbe aiming to do.
Danielle Spurling (49:16):
And that's exactly what everyone listening,
all our master swimmers, wantto be doing.
They want to be swimming wellinto their 90s.
Ryan Evernden (49:23):
Our program is fixed around the same.
We want to create swimmers forlife.
Danielle Spurling (49:26):
Well, ryan, thank you so much for joining us
on the podcast.
I mean, all your pearls ofwisdom are going to help so many
people and what we'll do iswe'll put a link to your website
in the show notes of today'sepisode and people can reach out
to you for more information andyou can work with them
individually if they would likethat.
So thank you so much 100%.
Ryan Evernden (49:49):
No worries, guys.
Thank you for having me againand I look forward to the next
time, whenever that may be.
Danielle Spurling (49:56):
Coming soon.
Ryan Evernden (49:57):
All right, thank you.
Danielle Spurling (50:00):
Okay, thanks, bye, take care bye.
Thanks for listening in totoday's episode.
Don't forget to check outRyan's website at
formidablestrengthcomau to getmore of his pearls of wisdom,
and follow him on Insta andFacebook at Swimming Strong.
Till next time, happy swimmingand bye for now.
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