How We Blew-up YouTube With Our Viral Analysis Of Ariarne Titmus vs. Katie Ledecky In The Women’s 400m Freestyle Final

Watch below and remember to give us a “like” and a subscribe for our analysis of Australian Ariarne Titmus’s triumphant first victory over the legendary Katie Ledecky.

Listen in as Head Coach Paul Newsome discusses Ariarne’s unusual breathing and pacing strategy as well as discussing Coach Dean Boxall’s jubilant dance moves in this 9 minute video which shot to #37 on the whole of YouTube’s trending list on Monday - our most popular video ever - we hope it brings you some great insight on how you too can learn to race your own race like Ariarne, even in the shadow of a legend:

youtu.be/-iei6jDwwH0

So famous in Australia right now that they’ve already made Ariarne a stamp!

Swim Smooth!

What Can A Swim Smooth Coach Do For Your Swimming?

At Swim Smooth our mission is to help everyone of any level swim better, wherever they are in the world. In a nutshell the world needs better swimming!

But what make a Swim Smooth coach different from other swim coach? Why should you be seeking one out?

Our founder Paul Newsome started Swim Smooth in Perth, Australia in 2004 based around two key elements which still hold true today:

- Innovative video analysis and stroke correction methods focusing on the needs of individual swimmers - coaching the swimmer not the stroke.

- A fun, motivating squad environment based around effective training methods for distance swimming, triathlon and open water.

17 years later, the "mothership" Swim Smooth squad still remains strong in Perth, but the innovative Swim Smooth vision and techniques have extended to all corners of the world via our heavily trained Swim Smooth Certified Coaches.

Here's the class of 2015 training in Perth:

We currently have nearly 50 coaches worldwide with Swim Smooth certification ready to make ground-breaking improvements to your swimming. Every Swim Smooth coach has been hand selected and heavily trained by the core Swim Smooth team, a process that takes around a year for an already experienced coach. This culminates in two weeks intensive training in Perth with the oracle himself Paul Newsome.

Each coach specialises in providing an individualised approach to your stroke correction that makes it truly effective whatever your height, build, natural ability or experience level:

Many swim coaches would ask Liz to swim with a long smooth stroke style like Chris.
That would be a disaster for her swimming.

Not only that but every Swim Smooth coach also runs group training focused around developing your swim specific fitness for distance swimming and open water skills. You'll notice a huge benefit from these sessions if you swim well over short distances but underperform over longer, or if you struggle in open water.

Find your nearest coach here: swimsmooth.com/coaches

Want your own Swim Smooth Coach to help you with your swimming? What can our coaches offer you? There are three main ways you can interact with our coaches around the world: 1-to-1 video analysis sessions, group training sessions (squads) and clinics and camps:

1-to-1 Video Analysis Sessions

Our 1-to-1 video analysis gives you the ability to see your stroke from every conceivable angle, above and below the water. Expertly filmed by your SS coach, this footage system gives you incredible insight into your swimming:

SS Coach Mary Jessey filming her swimmer in Calgary

Following filming, your coach will use their in depth analysis skills to show you what you are doing in the water and clearly explain what is currently holding you back:



Don't worry about forgetting anything from this analysis as you will take home a recording of the footage and feedback, so you can review it again whenever suits you.

Your coach will then have you back in the water for the stroke correction portion of the session, taking you through the processes and drills you need to tune up your stroke in just the right way:

SS Alicante Coach Enrique Plannes Marcos - working on correcting a swimmer's stroke in a chilly London pool!

Swim Smooth Squads

Join other swimmers just like you in one of our Swim Smooth squads all around the world. Our coaches run a number of sessions every week, using our Swim Smooth principles to improve your swimming technique, fitness and open water skills. We pride ourselves in providing a welcoming, inclusive and positive atmosphere in all of our squads - so come along today!

If you are quite new to swimming don't be put off by the word "squad" - it's just a group of like minded individuals like yourself working on improving their swimming in a structured environment. You don't need to swim like a fish or look like an underwear model to join either - we come in all sorts of speed ranges, shapes and sizes.

Want to find your nearest Swim Smooth Coach? Head to our website to find the best coach for you to take your swimming to the next level: www.swimsmooth.com/coaches

Swim Smooth!

What Goes Through Your Head In Those 30 Seconds Before You Commence Your Swim?

What goes through your head in those 30 seconds before you commence your swim, be it in the #swimmingpool or #openwater?

Is if fear? Fear about what? How you’ll feel? How you’ll perform? Whether it’s too cold? What’s swimming around you?

Or is it excitement? A crazy craving to get in and smash out a new PB? Maybe just to feel the exhilaration of being in the water? The opportunity and potential to get away from it all for a while?

Or is it concern? Worries that you should be doing something else? Maybe you should really be at work? Or with the kids? Whether you left the oven on?

Whatever goes through your head in those final 30 seconds just know that you’re about to experience the unique weightlessness and escapism that only swimming truly offers. Lean into that feeling. Go with the flow. Have purpose but also be flexible to new possibilities or to try a new drill for a change. Enjoy, but don’t force it. And remember in those first 30 seconds to just “bubble-bubble-breathe” and before you know it, whatever trepidation you may have felt in the 30 seconds before you hit the go switch and make your move, will soon be a distant memory anyway!

Swim Smooth!

How To Teach Children To Swim Smoothly - We Need Your Support!

Swim Smooth Coach Gabriela Minarikova is Swim Smooth's specialist in kids coaching and has written a unique book How To Teach Children To Swim Smoothly.

This is a richly illustrated book, with rhymes and easy-to-understand descriptions of how every child can learn to swim fast, well, playfully and with enthusiasm. The book works as a practical guide for parents who want to teach their child to swim on their own.

This brilliant work is shortly to be translated into English, the only issue is that she needs your support to do that and to get in into print. Gabi is based in Prague and has been working on converting all of Swim Smooth's brilliant coaching methods from adult coaching to make them perfect for kids development in all four strokes.

Find out more about this exciting project here: www.swimsmooth.cz/en/book

Also please support Gabi on her crowd funding page (in Czech but soon to be available in English): www.hithit.com/cs/project/9772/jak-naucit-deti-plavat-hladce-prirucka-nejen-pro-rodice

Over to Gabi:

How did it begin?

My daughter is to blame for everything and my desire to indulge her in the best, lead her to swim, teach her to love water and move in the water smoothly, and as naturally as sea creatures. Teach her through play, yet very effectively. Not the way it was for me, a drill. I started writing a swimming instruction methodology for a swimming school and section. which I founded in 2013. Now our methodology of Swimming with Plavlo and Plavlína is ready and it wins the hearts of swimmers. Hundreds of children have already successfully passed our courses, and we have helped those whose parents thought they would never learn to swim again. Every day we see huge shifts of children in our courses, but unfortunately we also see parents trying to teach their children to swim on their own and in general, but they can't do it at all, or it could be better if they knew how to do it and respected a few simple principles. And about that, and for you this book is.

What is our goal?

We know that with this book we will help better swimming, we will help many parents, as well as fellow teachers and coaches, and especially children who sometimes suffer in the water, do not enjoy it, are even afraid of it. At the same time, I know that even such children can be water lovers and swimming champions. I really wish that as many children as possible could learn to swim in this friendly, respectful and very effective way that children enjoy, and at the moment, due to the closed swimming pools, schools and sections, it is not possible other than "self-taught".

Details

Step by step, from easier to harder. Playfully and with the help of two little heroes Plavl and Plavlína, who love water so much that they are named after it. With stories, rhymes, pictures and captions that everyone can understand. This is a modern learning to swim, so that the child does not even know he is learning. Everything then goes smoothly and most importantly well. With our book, it will go smoothly for everyone. Impatience is a big mistake for inexperienced parents and swimming teachers. It's enough for the baby to swim and that's why it's not possible. It is enough that every child is an excellent swimmer.

Really from everyone 😊! It is enough not to skip the eight basic rules. To learn to love water, to live with it perfectly, to be a friend with it who can get into it safely and sound climbing. Breathe properly in the water, move in all directions, lie on it and let yourself float. Jump, dive, orient yourself below the surface, stroke the water and have the feeling to grab it. Only then start with the first swimming shots.

... and something more

Believe me, I drowned myself once, when I was 4 years old. Fortunately, everything turned out well and water is an inseparable friend for me.

Who we are?

I'm mainly a mom, but I'm also a 1st class swimming coach, a 1st class medical swimming instructor, a licensed Swim Smooth coach associating a worldwide network of coaches, the founder of the swimming school of the same name and the section where I work as chairwoman and head coach. I am still an active swimmer and athlete. I participated in the Czech Swimming Championships in the student category and the World Championships in the Masters category. I love water, I love training and I love working with children. I like to do everything meaningfully. and most importantly the best I can :)!

Why are we doing this?

With your support, this book, a guide for every good parent, can see the light, and I really thank you very much for your contribution. We have already tried to publish the book through reputable publishers, but unfortunately we have encountered such unacceptable requirements that we have decided to go the route of our own publication and ask you for a contribution to the direct costs associated with the publication. We do not include the author's fee.

HUUB wins Queen's Award for Innovation!

Here at Swim Smooth, we're super excited to announce that our wetsuit partner, HUUB, has just received the coveted Queen's Award for Innovation. Amazing! We'd love to take this opportunity to tell you a little more about the early days when Paul and Adam were visited on a dreary, wet September day in 2011 in Folkestone (Kent) by a true entrepreneurial visionary in the product development aspect of triathlon, Dean Jackson. 

Dean had a plan to fundamentally redesign how wetsuits were made and sought out Paul and Adam's help based on our unique Swim Type coaching methodology, to create a suit that better addressed the needs of a range of different swimmers and triathletes, taking into account varying levels of buoyancy. On the back of a paper napkin, overseen by a world-famous sports scientist and co-founder, Huub Toussaint, the three guys started to craft out what would ultimately become one of the world's leading wetsuit brands.

But before we tell you that story, let's hear from Dean on what this means for the company which today employs 24 passionate HUUBies, has created a world-beating independent cycling team, produces a massive amount of great technical wear, has the world's most famous chef, Gordon Ramsey, as one of its keenest users, and is still based at its home in Derby, UK.

From a Derby garage to Buckingham Palace in just nine years! 

HUUB, which has become a world leader in triathlon gear, has now received Royal approval after being awarded the Queen's Award for Innovation.

The awards are the most prestigious in the UK and celebrate the success of exciting businesses which are leading the way with pioneering products or services. HUUB was put under the microscope of a stringent panel of judges before they passed their recommendation to Her Majesty for approval.

HUUB's founder, Dean Jackson said, "To be recognised in the Queen's Awards is amazing. I would never have dreamed when starting this business on my kitchen table nine years ago that we would be recognised for what really makes HUUB special... Our innovation!

"We constantly strive to make athletes better and faster and our sport more fulfilling. We are relentless in the pursuit of performance, and innovation sits at the heart of everything we do.

"I'd like to thank the team for driving our ambition and aspirations to be the very best in our field and for believing in the crazy ideas that drive innovation and experimentation.

"There is a saying, 'if you do what you did, you get what you got', and we believe that to make an innovative change, you need to do, think and explore where others have failed to go or failed to see the benefit.

"Winning the Queen's Award is for the whole business. It's a reflection of the team's dedication to pushing thinking and challenging the norm."

Research | Science | Reality

Back on a dreary day in September 2011 as Swim Smooth Head Coach, Paul Newsome, was waiting for the call to swim the English Channel, Paul and Adam were visited in Dover by a true visionary in the product development aspect of triathlon, Dean Jackson. 

Dean had reached out to Swim Smooth to help him create a new range of exciting wetsuits which would be named HUUB after one of Paul's most-admired sports scientists, Professor Huub Toussaint. Dean coined the tagline "Research | Science | Reality" in recognition of Dean's research and understanding of what the triathlon population needed from a new wetsuit at that point, Huub's ability to test and back-up any innovations with his stringent scientific background, and Swim Smooth's work on the reality "coalface" with the swimming and triathlon population in a coaching context.

On the back of a paper napkin in a Costa Coffee in Folkestone, Dean, Paul, Adam, and Shelley Taylor-Smith (7-time world marathon swimming champion who was there to mentor Paul for his big swim), began discussing some new concepts for wetsuit design centred around Swim Smooth's Swim Type coaching methodology. In a coaching sense, we have used this system extensively since 2010 to help our coaches and swimmers determine a starting point for their individual stroke correction needs based on such things as height, build, gender, experience/ability, age, wingspan, etc. Dean was curious to know what we had learned about how these different factors impacted a swimmer's technique, specifically from the point of view of buoyancy profiles in the water. Did different types of swimmers require a different type of wetsuit based on how they normally swim without a suit?

Most people wrongly assume that everyone loves and benefits from the most buoyancy in a wetsuit as is legally allowed (5mm), however, our own observation, awareness, and thousands of hours working with a range of different swimmers, suggested that this wasn't the case - some people positively hated wearing a wetsuit and resent those who spend the big bucks and suddenly become significantly faster! 

The second wrong assumption people were making if they did believe that there could be a need for different levels of buoyancy between swimmers, was that more buoyancy for a guy would be better than more buoyancy for a female. Again, this assumption - whilst feasibly correct 70% of the time - didn't cover the whole gamut that we were seeing day-in, day-out as coaches. We were observing that wetsuit selection and buoyancy profile could be more closely linked to the swimmer's type (which is gender independent), than their specific gender and the assumption that all female swimmers float better than men.

Let's look at three extreme examples which helped form the basis of two of HUUB's early wetsuit range - the 3:5 Archimedes, the 3:3 Aura, and the 4:4 Aerious:

Our Classic Arnie Swim Type and the 3:5 Archimedes wetsuit:

Typically male, but many female Arnettes do exist, especially those with very lean, muscular frames of the type that might be doing Ironman at a relatively serious level. This is the classic swimmer who loves using a wetsuit as it helps to offset their key stroke flaw, low sinking legs. This swimmer loves using a pull buoy (and eventually buoyancy shorts and HUUB's "kickpant"), because of how this added buoyancy both lifts the legs and keeps them closer together, thus reducing drag. By creatively reducing buoyancy in the upper body of the wetsuit (3mm) and increasing buoyancy around the hips and legs (5mm), the 3:5 Archimedes wetsuit was the ultimate speed weapon for the type of swimmer who is ordinarily limited by their swimming prowess in the pool.

Click image above for a cool comparative wetsuit vs non-wetsuit video with an Arnie

Our Classic Kicktastic Swim Type and the 3:3 Aura wetsuit:

Many assume that everyone loves a wetsuit, but not a Kicktastic! In fact, most Kicktastics are not truly slower when wearing any wetsuit, it's just that they don't see the same gains that their Arnie / Arnette counterparts do and this has been historically frustrating for them. Together with Dean and Huub, we helped create the world's first specifically designed low-buoyancy wetsuit to cater to the fact that a Kicktastic's body profile and horizontal position in the water is already their key strength. Adding more buoyancy than what is necessary to keep the swimmer warm in colder water is simply unnecessary and contributed to the feeling of "unbalance" and awkwardness that a Kicktastic would repeatedly tell us about. The 3mm body combined with the 3mm legs saw a much more balanced position in the water for the Kicktastics who tried the original Aura suit and it soon became known as "the wetsuit for people who hate wetsuits"!

Overly buoyant wetsuit combined with a very strong kick = disaster / frustration

Our Classic Smooth / Swinger Swim Type and the 4:4 Aerious:

Even if you don't have a massively strong leg kick, but swimming is your background, chances are a) your buoyancy without a suit is already pretty good, and b) you want a wetsuit to feel like you're not wearing one! The 4mm body combined with the 4mm legs of the original lower-price-point Aerious became a quick crowd-favourite for those from a swimming background wanting to try triathlon for the first time. In fact, here's Australian National U18 open water swimming champion and this year's 4th place in the open category (narrowly missing a birth to the Tokyo Olympics by just 12 seconds), using a new version of Aerious just this morning in the Swan River here in Perth where we're undergoing another short COVID lockdown - Byron loves this suit!

Launch:

The HUUB wetsuit range was launched in February 2012 at the London Triathlon Show which we were hugely proud to be part of. Check out the initial release blog here, which shows some of the initial testing and analysis which Adam went to oversee at the hi-tech InnoSportNL facility in Eindhoven.

Further information:

Here are a couple of classic blogs from yesteryear talking about the link-up between your Swim Type and your wetsuit choice: 

http://www.feelforthewater.com/2013/04/how-to-choose-wetsuit-to-suit-your.html 

http://www.feelforthewater.com/2011/07/are-you-slower-in-wetsuit.html

http://www.feelforthewater.com/2012/03/better-wetsuit-design-for-women.html

We would like to send the whole HUUB team a massive round of applause and kudos for what they achieved in such a short space of time - epic stuff!

Swim Smooth

The Secret to a Life of Happiness and Longevity

Justyn Barnes, author of the brilliant book “Ikigai - the Japanese secret to a life of happiness and longevity” states that the word 'ikigai' in the simplest terms describes “value in living” or “reason for living”.

Another beautiful sunrise at Claremont Pool, Perth

Among the myriad interpretations of the word, Barnes states that ikigai can be thought of as “a reason to jump out of bed every morning” and a “springboard for tomorrow”. How true it is that the morning ritual of your swim can be both that reason and something that aids you in your pursuit of your current aim or objective, whatever that may be. 

Ikigai can be seen in its truest form every morning in the pools, lakes, rivers, oceans, seas, lidos right around the world. As the world starts to finally move towards a better place, so too do we hope that your own personal Ikigai can flourish once again.

Swim Smooth!

Using Heatmaps To Improve Your Swimming

Our new digital platform at swimsmooth.com includes some very special new features to improve your swimming. One of which is the ability to monitor your stroke technique just by wearing an Apple Watch as you swim:

Two years in development, we call this new patent-pending system "Stroke Insights" and it's a set to cause a revolution in swim coaching. No only can the system detect faults in your stroke technique but it can predict the time saving you will gain by improving your stroke and help you track your improvements over time.

Introducing Heatmaps

During an average swim session you are likely to swim around 1000 strokes with each arm. Using your Apple Watch, the Swim Smooth app records every rotation and acceleration of the watch on your wrist 50 times per second as you swim. Using our special algorithms developed by Swim Smooth's Adam Young*, we can track every single stroke you take in three dimensions.

Combined with a bio-mechanical model of the human body, we can accurately show you your stroke positions at key parts of your stroke. For instance Perth squad swimmer Phip pulls wide on her left side:

And her Stroke Insight for her pull through:

Notice the dots on the heatmap, every dot represents a single stroke, so you can see the variation in your stroke technique. There's 300m of data on that heatmap (approx 150 left arm strokes).

Note that the heatmap dots don't show the position of the watch, instead we've calculated the position of the centre of your palm and shown that instead. That's much more interesting from a coaching perspective.

The picture of the swimmer shows the average position the heatmap represents, together with a green "target zone" which you should be hitting. That makes it easy to interpret but don't ignore the heatmap, very often you can glean extra information from it as we'll discuss below.

Heatmap Spread

The great thing about a heatmap is that it gives you an idea of the variability in your stroke. Very experienced swimmers tend to have tight heatmaps as their stroke is very repeatable:

If you are new to swimming you are likely to have much more variability from stroke to stroke:

Pay attention to that in your own heatmaps, many of your strokes may sit within the target zone but others may fall outside - this could happen as you get tired or on a breathing stroke.

The Impact Of Breathing

If you've been following Swim Smooth for a while you will know that breathing can have a huge effect on your stroke technique. In fact we often say "If something is going to go wrong in your stroke, it will happen when you breathe". With heatmaps you can see this change in your stroke really clearly, particularly on your arm recovery and pull-through underwater.

For example here's Myffy, who has two really distinct clusters in her pull-through heatmap. The cluster in the target zone is on a normal stroke, the wider cluster is when breathing as ## presses out on the water to support her head whilst breathing:

It's normally easy to work out which is the breathing cluster as it shows as a deterioration in technique, typically either deeper (as with Myffy) very wide or deeper pull. 

With arm recovery most swimmers rotate their body more when they breathe, bringing their hand higher and possibly more inboard: so breathing clusters are normally higher and possibly closer to the centre line: 

Stroke Insights collects data for up to 90 minutes of swimming and we recommend you swim for at least 400m with the watch to get a full picture of your stroke over time. That said, you can see data from a single length of the pool.

To get data from both sides of your stroke simply swim for 400m on one side, then undo the strap and move to the other wrist. Don't touch any settings, just move it and start swimming again. The watch will detect the wrist change.

Quick tip: Stick to freestyle when swimming on your "opposite" wrist as stroke type detection is less accurate than on your normal wrist.

Trial Completely For Free

Keen to give this a go? Signup for a free trial at swimsmooth.com (there's also an iPhone app here). We'll analyse three of your swims completely for free!

At the moment this technology is only available for Apple Watch users but we hope to be able to bring to other smart watches in the future. You can use any Apple Watch from series 2 onwards (there is no difference in accuracy between devices).

Have a question on Stroke Insights / Heatmaps and how they work? Post in the blog comments here: #add link#

What If I Don't Have An Apple Watch?

Although you need an Apple Watch to get Stroke Insights, the rest of the analysis platform (including our extensive training plans) are fully compatible with Garmin.

In fact, you can use the system without wearing a watch at all, just tick off training sessions as you go and start to receive coaching feedback from how you are training!

Swim Smooth!

* You might know Adam as a swim coach but he also has a previous career in maths and engineering which has made developing Stroke Insights possible.

When Doing The Wrong Thing Can Help You Learn The Right Thing Easier

Coach Rob Kwaaitaal in The Netherlands instructs a swimmer on how to do the side kick drill correctly using a radio headset

One of our favourite tools to use as Swim Smooth Certified Coaches is a waterproof radio headset so that we can communicate with our swimmers whilst they perform drills, correct their strokes, and occasionally, purposefully do the wrong thing to learn how to do the right thing easier! This deliberate contrast between the swimmer's "before and after" stroke technique, can be a hugely powerful (and fun!) way to learn a new skill.

There have been various iterations of these headsets over the years (Finis make one called the Coach Communicator whilst another version is by a new company called Zygo), which work by allowing the coach to remain on pool deck whilst they speak instructions through a microphone / walkie-talkie. The swimmer typically hears these directions by way of a bone-conducting head piece which transfers audio very well in an aquatic environment. 

As a coach, you need to be super mindful not to give too much advice at once, as this can be overwhelming for the swimmer. In fact, from experience, it actually helps improve you as a coach by figuring out what to leave out of the "conversation" just as much as what to include. And by "conversation" we very much mean a one-way conversation - don't ask your swimmers any questions when their head is down in the water as there's an instinctive reaction to want to answer back and thereby suck in a load of water! The coach and swimmer learn this very quickly!

If you're relatively new to swimming, a common fault is to feel like you need to lift the head too high to take a breath in. In order to do this, the swimmer typically applies a strong downward force on the lead hand to lift their face out of the water which conversely sinks the legs low:

This lady is pushing down with her right hand to lift her head to breathe to the left

Learning to keep the head low and to trust the bow-wave that forms around the head when the right ear is held low towards the right shoulder as you breathe to your left (for example) is essential. Using the radio headset, we do this by teaching a swimmer to kick correctly on their side, aiming to keep one eye in the water and one eye out. For newer swimmers, we often get them to utilise the Finis Alignment Kick-Board to give a little reassurance to trust the extension of the lead arm in this position:

Head Coach Paul Newsome’s son, Jackson, learns to kick on his side with the Finis Alignment Kick-Board

The Alignment Kick-Board is only just a little larger than a standard hand paddle, and less buoyant than a typical kick board, but even then there’s still a tendency to want to apply pressure and push down on it to get the leverage to lift up and breathe. By using the radio headset, the coach can communicate with the swimmer and encourage them not to do this and to instead think about good posture, drawing the shoulder blades together and back. The learning process is then significantly enhanced by actively asking the swimmer to go back to doing the wrong thing so that they can instantly feel the detrimental affect it is having on their stroke. Do this back and forth a few times (correct technique vs poor technique) and the swimmer learns the correct position far easier. Of course, you can do this yourself too without a coach - there’s some extra suggestions on what you might try and experiment with in your stroke here and here.

Point 3 in the previous link refers to the fact that one of the leading causes of shoulder pain and impingement is a thumb-first entry into the water. Using a combination of video analysis and our new Swim Smooth app on Wednesday this week, Head Coach Paul Newsome was easily able to identify the biggest single concern for this swimmer who had complained about a sore left shoulder, and equally, the inability to breathe to her right:

Video footage clearly demonstrating a very pronounced thumb-first entry into the water on the left hand

 

Using the algorithm we created to tap into the recorded data from the gyroscopes and accelerometers in the Apple Watch (shown in the picture above), we were also able to visually represent this issue for the swimmer and be objective about it’s severity:

Stroke Insights on the Apple Watch clearly flag an issue with this swimmer’s left hand entry - her right hand is actually very good!

The benefit of using the Apple Watch and the Swim Smooth app in this regard is that it’s possible for the swimmer to use the watch in every session that they do and receive immediate objective feedback on whether they are improving. This in itself is a highly powerful learning tool. The initial video analysis session aided Coach Paul to confirm the diagnosis and educate the swimmer on how to correct it. 

During the stroke correction component of the session, Paul was able to instruct the swimmer via the radio headset to repeatedly switch between the new (improved) stroke with the old (problematic) stroke in a way which vastly empowered her learning. It also made the session fun and intuitive. Furthermore, it helped the swimmer not only understand why breathing to her right had always been an "impossibility" (because that left hand sliced through the water without making any purchase on it), but within 15 minutes be able to swim perfect bilateral breathing too due to the improvement in her left hand entry. Win-win!

With a combination of the swimmer attending the Swim Smooth Perth Squad sessions whilst using the Swim Smooth app on her own Apple Watch, it will allow her to relay this data back to Paul even when he might be busy with another swimmer or setting a different lane off. What might appear to initially be a replacement for coach-led video analysis and stroke correction, is actually a massive addition to completing the feedback loop in every session between coach and swimmer.

So, as and when you're able to return to the pool, keep your first few sessions fun and light on the intensity side, practice with some of the suggested stroke contrasts to find where you need to be, or, get an accurate recording of where your stroke is currently at using one of your three (3) FREE swims on the Swim Smooth app on your Apple Watch* to ensure that you start back on the right foot (or left hand as the case may be!).

Let us know how you get on.

Swim Smooth!

Stroke Insights is only available with Apple Watch but you can use all the other features in the new Swim Smooth platform by connecting your Garmin or equally just logging your swimming without using a swimming watch.

The Value of Swimming in Uncertain Times

 Hi Swimmers

Firstly, apologies for the radio silence over the last few weeks on the blog - we’ve had the whole team busily engaged in a complete revamp of the entire www.swimsmooth.com website and coaching interface, and whilst we are not quite done with all that yet, we are getting very close and hope to resume these blogs and our usual community engagement in due course very soon. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Today, Head Coach, Paul Newsome, has prepared a reflective piece for you on the value of swimming and what it means to us all, especially in these uncertain times. We hope it allows you to pause over a cup of tea or coffee and think a little bit about your own swimming and how your relationship with the water might have changed somewhat in the last 12 months. Paul features three brief stories of some inspiring swimmers he has had the pleasure to work with and how their swimming journeys have been significantly altered by the coronavirus, mostly for the better. Paul summarises with some of his own take-home points on how this period has changed his own thinking on swimming somewhat and how his ordinarily extrinsic competitive goalposts have shifted to a place of intrinsic challenge and finding a new calm with that. So please, relax, put your feet up and let’s get a little zen for a moment.