Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast with Ryan Evernden - Strength and conditioning secrets to unlock your potential in the water

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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Chapters

• 0:09 Improving Swimmers' Strength and Technique
• 7:30 Optimizing Range of Motion and Strength
• 12:37 Understanding Periodisation and Progressive Overload
• 24:23 Explosive Plyometrics for Swimmers
• 36:20 Enhancing Swimmers' Core Strength and Rotation
• 42:27 Maintaining Swimmer's Performance and Longevity

Transcript

Danielle Spurling: 0:09

Hello swimmers and welcome to another episode of Torpedo Swim Talk podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Spurling, and each week we chat to a master swimmer from around the world about their swimming journey. Today I'm welcoming back to the podcast three-time guest and a favourite of the show, Ryan Evernden. Ryan is a former top-level swimmer coach and strength and conditioning guru. He's talking with us today about the crux of what we, as master swimmers, need to do with our strength training on land before our technique, and therefore our strength, speed and efficiency, improves in the water. It's a simple but often neglected fact. Let's hear from Ryan now as we solve this dilemma we all face. Hi Ryan, thanks for joining us on the podcast today.

Ryan Evernden: 1:04

Good to be back.

Danielle Spurling: 1:05

Yeah, it's great to have you back Now for our listeners that haven't heard from you. On the other two podcasts that you've been on with us, I've been on two then You've been on two.

Ryan Evernden: 1:15

Am I the only third time, or has Andy got a third time?

Danielle Spurling: 1:19

You are the only third time I do Woo, yay, yay, the only third time, yay. So you're a swim coach and strength and conditioning guru based in Perth, western Australia, and I wanted to get you back on the podcast to discuss a post that you put out last week which really hit home for me, and I just wanted to read it out for everyone first, and then we'll have a chat about it. So you said many swimmers fail to understand the hard truth when it comes to improving their technique in the water, and if you're not able to get into position and stabilise yourself out of the water, there's no way that you're going to be able to do it in the water. So can you tell us what you meant by that statement, because I think it's really pertinent, particularly for master swimmers.

Ryan Evernden: 2:05

Yeah. So this realistically comes back to you know, something that I've personally battled with over the years and I just see popping up a lot and masters is where this probably pops up the most is you know we have all these guys doing, you know these array of drills and stuff like that, with technical improvements, people doing you know underwater filming, giving people video analysis and all that stuff's excellent. But I feel like, and from what we've seen in our program, is that people just don't understand that if you're physically not capable of getting into a position and stabilizing that position, no matter what video analysis you do or the amount of drills that you do in the water, if you don't have the physical capacity to do something, it doesn't matter how many times you tell someone how to do it, they're not able to do it. Like if you can't get your and freestyle is a prime example, and I just for anyone who might be a breaststroker there's a very good breaststroke example. I can go through later as well but for freestyle or any of the strokes, because they all require you to get your arm above your head. So if you're standing up and you can't put your arm above your head without your lower back, compensating or there are any other compensation mechanisms going on there just you standing up best way to do this, if you're at home listening or you know where that is to do it lying down on your back with your feet planted on the floor. Put your arms up in front of you so they're facing the ceiling, and just try and get your thumbs to touch the floor behind your head and see if your lower back comes off the floor or anything else comes off the floor to try and make that happen. Or can you actually get there without any rotation of your hand or anything like that having to take place?

Ryan Evernden: 3:48

If you can't get your arm above your head, you're just, for starters, you're just gonna spend a lot of time not being able to get into that high elbow catch position that you're all chasing, and I think that's something that has been really not emphasised enough, especially in the master's swimming community. There's so many and especially with this boom of master's swimming and boom of open water swimming that we're certainly having in Perth at the moment, I can see it across the country and globally as well, especially in the master's communities and globally as well, especially, as you know, in the masters communities, like there's this just rampant neglect for the amount of need that there is to get your, get yourself physically able to do these things 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 our clients that come see us, and over and over again, we just we keep trying to make this, this point come through. But with everything, it's a thing that requires time, and I was.

Ryan Evernden: 4:54

Actually, when I put that post up, I was very surprised with the result that I got, the, the feedback that came from that, the amount of support that actually came from that. I was thinking that it might be a mildly controversial topic to tell people to stop doing technical drills and start focusing on how you're physically able to do things, especially in the swimming community, but it seemed like there was a lot of agreeance there. What's great to see.

Danielle Spurling: 5:20

Yeah, absolutely, and I mean to do what you're saying. You need to have a better range of motion or range of movement, and you need to increase your strength and your stability. So how does a master swimmer go about increasing their range of motion?

Ryan Evernden: 5:40

know one one cannot happen without the other. And then the other one. The second part of it is essential for maintaining and actually achieving it. So the first point is obviously the range of motion. If you do not have the range of motion capacity to get yourself into the position you need to get into to have the correct biomechanical technique that everyone's looking for in the water, you're not gonna doesn't matter, like that's looking for. In the water, you're not going to, doesn't matter, like that's. That's point one. How you get there is a little bit different, and it's not just stretch, stretch for days, um. But once you have that range of motion, the stability is what you need, and that comes from being able to actually pull your shoulder back into the joint, engage your lats properly and be able to pull through the water. The amount of swimmers that I work with that have never been able to engage, that I've never felt their lats on while swimming before is, is simply like baffling to me, because if you're doing a giant pool set and all you're feeling is like an intense, um discomfort in your shoulders and your lats, you're not waking up with sore lats or pecs. You have not used your lats or pecs enough, I don't think. Or your loading needs to improve. Um, not saying that everyone needs to be sore after workouts, but that would be a good example that people just don't don't have. And that's where the strength side of things comes in. So you need to be able to have the strength to be able to support the joint hold position and then be able to deliver whatever power you maybe may have. And they're the two parts. So, yeah, range of motion to get you there, and then stability and strength to be able to actually apply whatever you've currently got, or whatever you're currently building, to the water to actually have a meaningful effect. And to get back to how you can achieve that. Range of motion is obviously, you know, mobility. Work is key for that. So, opening yourself up.

Ryan Evernden: 7:36

If we stay on the shoulder just for argument's sake because that's probably what most people listening are going to be having trouble with first thing you need to do is assess your breathing. What is probably for a lot of people going like why the hell would we look at our breathing to assess our shoulder? Your breathing mechanics come from your diaphragm, your rib cage, all those things, and these things are all connected. So when we're working, we like to work. We have a rule we work proximally to distal, so we always deal with the most central thing first, because if we fix the central thing a lot of the time, that can be the root cause for everything else. So we make sure we go central and then we work our way out, because if you try working your way back in, you're generally just going to be tripping over yourself on the path there.

Ryan Evernden: 8:23

So breathing mechanics is key because a lot of people are, you know, breathing without good diaphragm use and stuff like that. So they keep all the all the tension up high and they breathe into their shoulders and neck what creates, you know, unnecessary tension, and and fatigue and fatigue is the main one. So what people don't realize is when things are feeling tired, they're often very fatigued from a lot of use and that's what creates the tension. So they kind of lock up because they're very tired and then when you try to use them, there's nothing left for them to give. So breathing is something that everyone has to do and everyone has to do all the time. So that's where you need to start, because if you're not addressing that, you're not going to mobilize enough or you're just going to keep running. There's going to be this big feedback loop coming up. You're going to get the mobility, you're going to go through a bit of training. You're going to come back back down to getting tight after, whatever happens. You get stressed or something or something, and then you're going to be starting that cycle all over again. So start there.

Ryan Evernden: 9:28

The next part in terms of working our way out would be making sure that you have at least 10 degrees of upper thoracic mobility, so that is the ability for you just to lift your chest up without your lower mid-back doing much work. To keep it very simple, so we can get it across on an audio platform um, that will come from a lot of you know, extension work for your upper back and things like we call them a peanut. I'm not actually too sure what they are, but they're the spiky balls that are kind of joined together. Okay, a nice little bit for your um, for your spine to sit on, sit that in between your shoulder blades open up, push your, push your arms out in front of you and then do some that breathing thing that we talked about before, and this is why that's so important is because that's our key to getting this mobility release.

Ryan Evernden: 10:19

Go through that breathing, and now, when you're doing stuff like stretching or mobility work in this traditional sense, we want to make sure that we aren't forcing anything, that we are relaxing and we are creating an environment where your body decides like thinks that it's no longer something to be scared of and it's desensitizing it from whatever's going on around it, so that so that's really key on that part. And then there's breathing and again that thoracic extension and going from there To mobilize further. We then move our way out to the scap and we make sure that we can get full scapular range, because if we can't get the full scapular range, we will not be able to open up the shoulder joint itself. And then you can start moving to the shoulder joints. That would be like release work around your lats, your pecs, and then you can start moving to the shoulder joints. That would be like release work around your lats, your pecs, making sure that you can get your elbow up into your head if you have it across your shoulder. That would hopefully be able to release you into getting full overhead range of motion.

Ryan Evernden: 11:17

And then, once you can do that, then we need to start the strength training. The strength training. So a lot of isometric holds in this part. When you're in this early intervention stage of holding your shoulder inside the capsule and making sure that you're really stabilizing under load and don't be obviously progress your load without being an idiot, you know. Start light, but don't be afraid to progress. A lot of people get a bit scared of putting a bit of load on it and don't do that progression. So don't be afraid to progress, but just do it in a sensible way. Um, if you're looking for a very easy way to do progression no more than 10 per week I was going to actually ask.

Danielle Spurling: 12:02

I was going to ask that because I don't think a lot of master swimmers know about overload and obviously there's a lot of different things you can overload. You can overload the rep. You can increase the reps, the resistance, the volume, the frequency. You can decrease the rest. Would you, would you recommend that they change one variable each week?

Danielle Spurling: 12:22

yeah to overload and should they do the same within? So if they're increasing their reps 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 to another one to make it more productive?

Ryan Evernden: 12:36

Yeah. So this starts going into the murky waters of periodisation and progressive overload, but easy way to think about it if you just keep it. To keep it as simple as possible, we have intensity, volume and rest is probably the three that we're going to go with today. Intensity would be the extra load that you're putting onto something. Volume would be your reps and your sets and your rest would be the amount of time you give yourself to recover afterwards. Now, rest can be quite an interesting one because, depending on the adaptation that you want to get, you're obviously going to be changing your, your rest period and stuff like that. So it can be a bit tricky with rest. So if you're just going to keep it even more simple, stay with your intensity and volume and I would probably look to chase one adaptation at a time. So if we so if we're having a block, say you map out a four-week block and you're going, okay, this four-week block, we are going to look at increasing the intensity over this four-week block. So you'd start at your base level, you'd increase, say 10% or under. If it's under, that's fine. Increase 10% again, increase 10% again And% again, and just that linear way of progressing, especially if you're very new can work really well if you're someone who's a bit more trained or has a little bit more fatigue levels. Maybe if you stretch it out to a five week block, you can go, you know, base 10%, 10%, slight deload, 10% and then continue on that way.

Ryan Evernden: 14:07

There's a few different variations that you can do on that. Is deloading necessary? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. That would be very outside factors in terms of what your pull work is. I tend to put most of my masters guys in some kind of deload at some point.

Ryan Evernden: 14:24

Is it every four weeks? Probably not, because the change that we have every four weeks often adds enough of a change that we're not overloading that specific adaptation. Um, so, for example, if we did, if we're at the start of the year because these are all seasonally dependent questions that we're asking ourselves as well we may go for an increase in intensity through increasing the time under tension or the amount of the duration that we are holding an isometric load for, or something like that, and the load that we put under that isometric. So we'll just go one of those things. Then we might go okay, well, now we want to increase the volume of that. So we're going to do an extra set and then we're going to do you know, we're going to add five seconds to that that isometric hold each week. However, we want to do it. We just want to see some kind of steady progression, and you'll probably know when you've overshot it because you won't be able to do it, and that's when you just reel it back.

Danielle Spurling: 15:19

I will generally go if you overshoot, go two weeks back and give yourself two comfortable reps in the tank and and and go from there again so, with an isometric exercise like that and we were talking about the shoulder, for instance, as a bit of a test case what would be an isometric or what would be some isometric exercises that people could look at? Would be like a hang, or would it 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 isometric hold. Isometrics are great when you don't have anything to use and they're great when you do have a lot of stuff to use as well. But a hang if you have something just to hang on to and then really not doing a loose hang. So we have two different types. We not doing a loose hang, so we have two different types. We go for a loose hang and then a dip and like a attention hang, I guess. So arms above your head, hanging on to something, feet off the ground, and then pull your shoulders down, really feel that lat you should. It should look like your shoulders are at their normal height. So if you weren't hanging and you're walking around where your shoulders are, then that's what we're kind of looking for, because obviously when you hang upside down, your first intention is going to be those shoulders lift up to your ears. So you just got to pull those back down so they're nice and flat and then go from there. That would be where I'd want to hear it. Feel it. You'll start feeling that in your lats, you'll start feeling your pec, your upper back and all those things. You will feel it in your hands as well, because we're obviously doing a lot of grip strength there.

Ryan Evernden: 16:48

But a hang is a really great one. It requires not a lot and it's very easy to manipulate and improve and progress over time. Um, so if you start, even if you start at like five seconds, you can just go. Okay, well, we're just going to increase one second until we get to x number Like. Even if you do like, I think people want to jump too much as well. So I think everyone's going to start at like 30 seconds and then assume they're going to go to 45, where that's actually, if we take our 10% rule, that's a huge increase.

Danielle Spurling: 17:19

Yeah.

Ryan Evernden: 17:20

And that can be done. But if you're very weak to start off with, take the advantage of momentum. Do a five-second hang, then next week do a six-second hang and do a seven-second hang and keep going, because momentum is going to be your friend, because you're not going to build up these mental blocks around certain exercises, like a hang or a pull-up or anything like that, and just get stuck. What's a big issue that a lot of people have. So just be really focused on. I want to make the smallest gains possible consistently, and that will make you so much better. You know, if you did that, if you did one second for a year, you're already 52 seconds faster, better than you were before. So if you started at five, you've made it to a minute. Congratulations, you're in a good place. A really strict dead hang that's pretty good. Right, you could probably have increased the speed somewhere along the line there that you got there, but if that was what you got, that's still a really good result. Um, another one that you can do is um, say a wty. I hold. These are just, you know, lying flat down on your flat down. A w position would be.

Ryan Evernden: 18:32

We'll start with a t. That's probably the easiest way to do this succinctly arms out wide, so directly out from your shoulders, as wide as you can go, and then just lift them off the ground. I like to tell people to turn your thumbs up because it externally rotates the shoulder a little bit for them, because otherwise people just start dumping forwards and that's not what we're after. So we want to just thumbs up and then lift the shoulder up. Make sure you're lifting the shoulder, not the hand, because people with a lot of mobility will just lift their hand up and dump their shoulder forwards. So make sure it's shoulder lift up and the hand follows the shoulder. So make sure it's shoulder lift up and the hand follows the shoulder. You don't need to have your hand up super high. It's actually better if it's just off the ground, if your shoulder's back and that's the same for all the next couple that we're going for.

Ryan Evernden: 19:18

From the T position you can then go to a W position. What is? Just bending the elbow, keeping the thumb up, and we're looking to keep the elbow and the wrist at the same height. That's the external rotation there. A Y position is just you know, if you're going to do the YMCA, the YMCA it's the Y position okay, and then an I position would just be directly up above your head. Don't hold your hands, because one side will compensate for the other side and then we're not getting equal footing. Yes, that would be another really good one that works really well.

Ryan Evernden: 19:53

And the one that also really works well and a lot of people hate and it's very hard is an isometric push-up. So this is right at the bottom of the push-up, it's not at the top. That would just be a tall plank, just be a tall plank. The reason the isometric push-up is good when done well is because if you're pulling your shoulders back and holding that shoulder position while doing your push-up position, you're going to get a lot of very a lot of pressure on that shoulder with a lot of very good isometric tension in the right places that you want it to. The problem is with the push-up that not a lot of people are strong enough for it and they their shoulders dump forwards and we lose that that position that we would like.

Ryan Evernden: 20:30

So for that one, I always recommend you start on the floor, you don't start on the bottom and come down for the push-up. You start lying down, you put your hands in the right position, you squeeze your butt and then just push yourself just off the floor, literally as as far off the floor as you can like tiniest amount off the floor you can do and then squeeze your shoulder blades together and hold that position Again. Start with like two seconds if you have to. I'm sure everyone can mentally get themselves to two seconds most likely. If you can't, that's absolutely fine. Go to an incline variation of it and work your way down the incline so you get more horizontal as you go and then you'll be at horizontal and you can work your way on loading 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 or do you sort of stagger that out? You start with it more, with a more 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 different types of isometrics. So the ones that I just explained to you would be yielding isometrics. So that would be ones where you're trying to resist yourself from falling, like from losing position. Um, they would be more of an example of the ones that I use early in this season, um, to build that stability and build that, that really strong connection points that we, that we're talking about. Specific for this um, we've got overcoming isometrics as well. What are more? Um, you keep those very short because they're like try to lift the. If you say you've got a squat rack, you'll set your your bar up underneath the hooks and try and lift the. If you say you've got a squat rack, you'll set your your bar up underneath the hooks and try and lift the squat rack out the ground, what's obviously not happening when it's bolted down. But the idea is to generate as much force as possible in a short period of time and then express that force afterwards. Um, what's different? So there's obviously two different types of that. Um, the ones we just talked about, the yielding ones. I like to keep those more general and less swimming. Specific, the overcoming ones because of the nature of them. We keep those very specific, so they become very specific. So we actually put people in catch positions, we put them in kicking positions, all of those kind of things. For those ones, um, block start positions, we really get specific with the angles there.

Ryan Evernden: 22:46

But for the the purpose of what we're probably talking about here, of getting technical gains in your swimming, I would probably stick away from those ones. Let's not try and make yourself get a specific thing when you can't even do it in the water yet. If that makes sense, what's a? You know, an underlying principle of this whole thing is, like you know, there is no point trying to train something if you can't even freaking get yourself in the right position to train it properly. Because, again, you, you're just teaching your body incorrect patterns. What? And? The more you teach a pattern, the harder it is to undo. So that would be for another podcast, probably more towards the summer.

Danielle Spurling: 23:23

Yeah, just booking myself, yeah absolutely just promoting the fourth podcast 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. Did you know that you can now subscribe to the show by becoming a supporter of the show? It helps us continue to put out our weekly content, which is free to all who listen. You can become a subscriber for as little as $3 by following the link in our Instagram bio at Torpedo Swim Talk Podcast or via the button on our Torpedo Swim Talk website. As part of the subscription, you'll get advanced notification that a new episode is dropped. You'll receive four swim training workouts a month. You'll become a member of our private WhatsApp group, you'll get a shout out on the show and we're looking to add new parts to our content all the time. Now back to Ryan. How about putting in things like plyometrics and explosive movements alongside the traditional strength sort of work that people do? Can that help with the range of motion and stability?

Ryan Evernden: 24:35

Yeah, so I mean 100%. There's a lot of very good. So what we're really talking about here is like loading tendons and tendons. Like you know, there's a few ways that we want to load tendons. We can do it like isometrically for that more like stability aspect of things and holding of positions and all those things, and then plymetrically for the springiness, like to make you more springy, to build that more explosiveness. So with that, you know, again, it's very dependent on what time of year you're in and what you're looking to do.

Ryan Evernden: 25:10

Realistically, everything at the end of the day is determined by the adaptation that you're trying to achieve. So if we are trying to achieve an overhead stability thing, adaptation, I will probably be looking more towards stuff like your low amplitude plyometrics for upper body and lower body. Um, what would be more continuous um efforts, not just your maximal jump springs, bounce kind of things, um. So to keep it more on topic about the overarching concept of the podcast, we'd probably talk more about the low amp stuff. That would be your hopping, your continuous hopping, your um, your pogos, what's just jumping up and down on the spot, um, and those more plyometrically inclined exercises like that, the upper body ones, are interesting and this is something that, like you know, in a world that is not very prone to want to work with swimmers, no one's. There's not a lot of exploration in this um, but we have done a fair bit because that's what we work with as soon as so, one that we really like.

Ryan Evernden: 26:22

And this is depending on if you have overhead head range of motion first.

Ryan Evernden: 26:25

That would be your first point, because if you don't have it like we've talked about, if you don't have it, don't do it wrong, you know.

Ryan Evernden: 26:32

So once you've got your range of motion and you're working on the stability and strength aspect, 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 you possibly can. You want a ball that's got a little bit of bounce to it and then you want to throw the ball into the wall and, as quickly as you possibly can, throw it into the wall and you're not realistically going to lose contact with this thing at any one time because you're so close. The bounce of the ball is going to push your arm back and then you're going to rapidly try to get back onto it and you're going to do that for an extended period of time. 20 to 30 seconds is generally where we kind of leave it. We have gone a little bit longer, but that's kind of you know where we like to hang out and that's just about you expressing your force into something, getting the rebound and having to reflect that force back in a rapid way.

Ryan Evernden: 27:25

And that's a single-arm one you do and then you do the other double arm I have I don't think the coordination skills are quite there in swimming to do it single arm. I'll definitely be doing both hands on the ball and doing it that way you've got both hands on on the side of the ball, like that you can't see. It's a podcast I'm doing for anyone listening. I'm doing the actions as I'm talking. So, but for you guys listening, you'd put your hands above your head. You'll have your hands on either side of the ball and you'd throw it with your hands on the side of the ball the whole time. That way it's. It's it's very much going to keep left and right doing what they want to do, instead of overloading one to the other. If you can do it single arm, I'd love to see it. So please feel free to send me a. Tag me. Swimmingstrong is my Instagram handle. Just giving myself another cheap plug while we're here. Tag me in and I'll definitely reshare it. I'd love to see a single-arm one.

Danielle Spurling: 28:17

The challenge is out there for everyone to do a single-arm, one A single-arm continuous overhead ball throw.

Ryan Evernden: 28:21

That would be excellent to see. We've got others that you can do as well. You can do some where you're lying down and that is very much like trying to bounce a ball off the floor. But you know, you could probably do it on a like on a bosu ball. Um, that would probably be a more appropriate way to do it. But you've got to get the, the levels right, because you don't want to be out of position, so you'd want to be at an even level to the bosu ball. So it requires a fair bit of you know, of preparation, of setup and then of actually getting it into the right position. Then you can, you could move it all the way through the, the different ranges of the shoulder that way.

Ryan Evernden: 28:59

But we tend to keep it simple with the overhead one, um. The other one that we like to do is would be a a banded tantrum overhead, overhead banded tantrum. And there's also what would be lying. You can do it lying or kneeling. You set the bands up across a rig and if you can picture a baby chucking a tantrum with their arms going up and down, up and down, up and down, that is literally it. You stick your arms on the band and you just go absolutely nuts on it. Keep yourself as long as possible, don't start shortening up Long as possible and then just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Same principle as the overhead ball throw. We want to hit it as hard as we can and then react as quickly, as fast as we can for a time period, 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 the time the band strength might not be strong enough. If you go in between, okay, and if you go with the double on top, you can smack it and the force that is coming off the band that you have to then react to you've still got that there. So there's still that elastic quality of you having to resist the force that's being generated up. So I found that the double band, like doing it on top of the band and just having the power of both bands, is good. But then again, we've done it with both and we've just doubled the bands up for some people as well, but that was I would. I would say that's more progressed, 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 your hands, aren't you?

Ryan Evernden: 30:37

so yeah, you are, but you're also taking away from it, or're trying to get the tendon to do it itself and allowing the band to do it. I generally prefer having just the band underneath the hands and you having to resist and react to the force.

Danielle Spurling: 30:53

Yeah, that makes sense. What are your thoughts on? Like? I always think of this as an explosive exercise overhead med ball slam a ball with a bit of bounce so it's coming back to waist height for you to grab, but where you've got it above your head with two and slamming it down love it.

Ryan Evernden: 31:11

So this is, this is great. This is probably the end stage of your tech like of how we could transfer this technique across um. So once we've got the, if we go back to the start, we've got the range of motion, we've got the stability, you'd be able to strengthen it. So if we stay in the overhead pull motion say, we've got overhead range of motion, we can now centrate in a hang position. We've now developed a pull-up position so we can go from long to short and and display force. Then this would be the next stage of that.

Ryan Evernden: 31:37

What's doing it at velocity? The faster you move, the harder stuff becomes to get right, if that makes sense. So if you're in the water swimming, you could probably do the technique correctly at no speed, 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 over to the stability aspect of it was would be the dead hang holding it. So that's the isometric hitting up the, the pull up, and making sure that we look before we engage the pull up. We manage to pull the shoulders back down, centrate that joint and then pull yourself up to engage the lats properly and then, once we can get that with a bit of load on it, we probably go to the bull throw down where we can try and get it more specific.

Ryan Evernden: 32:20

To the catch pull position now, when I'm doing this, I tend not to tell people to to the catch pool position. Now, when I'm doing this, I tend not to tell people to visualize the catch pool position, what we do instead, because I don't like people trying to be swimmers outside of the wall, but we want to get as close as possible for specificity reasons and transfer reasons. So what we then do is go, okay, what we'll do is put the arm above your head and, instead of them to like throw it down, I tell them to roll the hand over the top of the ball, what will naturally get them to get that hand position over and elbow starting to come up nice and high and then accelerate through for the slam. That way it's a bit more actually getting. They generally get it better.

Ryan Evernden: 33:02

Because what people are going to do if you tell them just to throw the ball down? They generally just have it at the top, pull the elbow down the ball and just follow through that way. This way create the momentum with the ball, like, like if you're swimming. Swimming is a sport that is not done stationary. There's generally momentum with you at all times you use the momentum that you already have as you're going through the water. So if we're thinking about the ball, we're using the momentum of the ball, rolling off your hand, rolling down your hand as your fingers are coming over the top of it, what naturally gets your elbow to come up, your shoulder to come down into that centrated, stabilized position, and then we can follow through and pull all the way down. I do that generally with a dead ball because I'm terrified of people getting smacked back in the 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 doing something explosive, you want to do it explosive. You don't want to do something explosive where you actually end up just doing it continuously for an aerobic effect.

Danielle Spurling: 34:12

Yeah.

Ryan Evernden: 34:12

Does that make sense?

Ryan Evernden: 34:13

So I like the dead, because it forces people to stop and it makes them pick it back up and then they reset the position and then they get the position right again and we build this pattern consistently over time rather than just going.

Ryan Evernden: 34:29

I'm assuming that you're going to get the positioning right, I'm assuming that you're going to be able to do it and then just continually going at it, because they're going to do that in the water anyway because they don't have time to set, reset.

Ryan Evernden: 34:41

So what we can do with this technical way of thinking about it, we can pick the ball up, put it above our head, roll the hand over, get the elbow naturally coming up because that's what the mechanics of your hand is going to dictate to your elbow and then throwing down, then resetting and doing it again and building a pattern.

Ryan Evernden: 34:58

So when we do get in the water and we do see some technical changes and you do start implementing those drills because I'm not saying that drills aren't important and I'm not saying video analysis isn't important for underwater filming and stuff like that I'm just saying that you need to be able to have the capability to make the change before you can actually make the change, what seems pretty logical to me, and then they'll actually be able to use these drills and use that field, but they've already got a baseline pattern that they can recognize as the movement because they've done it on land. What is, for most humans, I know, a more familiar environment for us to be able to feel what I feel, see and understand what's actually going on yeah, all, all, just such fantastic advice for everyone listening.

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 the distal. What I'm always interested in with swimming is that a lot of people think about the straight plane and when we're in the water and we're swimming, we're actually rotating and we're moving parts of our body so that we stabilise in the water. What on land can people work on to 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 move so that you don't snake through the water? What can they do for that kind of stabilisation?

Ryan Evernden: 36:20

Yeah, so again, we start with breathing. That's the first place. Breathing is the greatest and most underrated core exercise that anyone's ever done and no one will ever admit to, apart from me on this podcast and probably some other people, just to contradict everything I just said in one sentence. But you start with breathing, if you can stress this enough. Breathing is not just you getting air into your body. It is a skill that can allow you to hold your trunk together. It can help you regulate your emotions, it can help you release muscles. So get good at breathing and other things become a lot easier for you. Not saying you have to become Windhoff and control your body temperature with the power of the breath, but it becomes a lot easier if you can just get some basic breathing mechanics and learn that skill. So start there. Um, then we're. Then we're looking at realistically. What we're looking at here is being able to maintain the position of the trunk while we use our limbs to generate force. So what happens happens here is you know, everything has action and reaction. So if you put your hand in the water up here, there is a force that is going to have to be reacted to the entire way through your body and something is going to go, something is going to have to balance that out. So when we put our hand and this is what you'll see a lot of people when they're just snaking around the pool they put their hand. And this is what you'll see a lot of people when they're just snaking around the pool they put their hand in and they press out and their hip goes all the way up to the other side. Okay, so what we need to do in terms of rotation and stuff like that, we've got to think okay, well, if we're thinking about rotation, we want to kind of almost keep the hips relatively fixed where we can allow the trunk to move around, get position fix and go. So we have that band and chain kind of activity going on. So with that again, mobility start.

Ryan Evernden: 38:12

So if we just take the same system, we apply it across, you need to be able to have the range of motion to be able to get this right to start off with. So you need to be able to actually get the rotational demands that you want. 60 degrees of rotation is okay. That would be your baseline of being okay. We're in a good position here. I tend to try and push for 70 with my guys just so we have it, if we can get it. But 60 is good. So if you get 60 degrees of rotation in your trunk, we're happy. We'll try and get to 70. If you're going past 70 you're probably doing something really weird and we don't need that. You probably want to just get more stable.

Ryan Evernden: 38:53

Once you have that range, then we need to work on ways that we can resist forces being acted upon your trunk. So this is our anti-rotation, anti-lateral flexion exercises. So a pile-off press would be a great example of this, where you've got a band, it's coming 90 degrees out from your hand and you've got to hold that fixed position. Then you can go for all the progressions of the pile-off press, like you start with the brace, you go to the press, then you go to get it above your head and all the different ways and variations that that goes. That would be my next stage.

Ryan Evernden: 39:30

And then it will be about trying to do it in terms of movement. So chopping movements, rotational movements with bands or cables before we get to our throwing. So see how this system applies across. We've got range of motion, we've managed to stabilize and isolate the thing that needs to stay still and build that stability. We are then teaching it how to move through chains and using the cable machines, keeping hips fixed. Try to keep your hips in the same position and rotate your shoulders around, and then we can go to go. All right, let's go fast on this, let's put some power down, and that's where you can throw a ball into the thing. Try and keep the hips fixed, because the more velocity you add, the more complex it becomes and the harder it comes for your body to handle. So that's why that progression really works quite well for that.

Danielle Spurling: 40:22

Yeah, I love that. I think it's a part of swimming that people forget to work on, and I think that it's a weakness that 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 you get older, you naturally get siffer yeah true.

Ryan Evernden: 40:45

The less you use, the less. Like you know, if you don't move it you lose it, whatever the old phrase is. So we've got to get you, we've got to get, and everyone just is in a forward and backwards lifestyle. Like you move forwards, you move backwards. Like swimming is the same almost, it's just you know, it's very similar plane of motion. There's no, there's no emphasis on on going sideways, there's no emphasis on rotation in daily life and stuff like that. So we, we adapt to the body is going to adapt to what we give it. So I think a lot of people in there, and especially in strength and conditioning programs for swimming, tend to focus on the stuff that they think are going to be the specific things, so pull-ups, all of those things that are important Obviously they're important, and they forget that creating a body that is capable of doing a lot of things is going to give those attributes, those strengths, even more strength, because you're going to bring up the weaknesses, so the strengths don't have to compensate for the weaknesses anymore. So I think, like you know, even our breaststrokers do rotation work and breaststroke realistically doesn't need rotation. The we do it because a they they do a lot of their aerobic work in freestyle and they'll do a lot of their recovery work in freestyle and B. It's good for them. Like them, being able to rotate a bit more is good for them. Like it opens up, it stops stiffness through hips and back and all these other things that we need to work on. So it's great to know what the stroke archetype is and building a program around that to make sure that they're getting the best performance possible.

Ryan Evernden: 42:27

But at the end of the day, the main role of a strength coach for swimmers is to keep them swimming and increasing the capacity that they have to get better in the water. That's what we're here for, and a lot of people just jump straight to the performance side of things when, if they're focused on just keeping people in the performance side of things, when, if they focused on just keeping people in the water. And what do we need to do to do that? Balance out. Balance out the weaknesses. They're going to have weaknesses. We're not going to eradicate weaknesses it's not what we're saying here but we just don't want them to be so weak in certain areas that their strengths are neglected because they're compensating for those weaknesses all the time, like it just needs to be at the base level that is acceptable, and then we can make sure the strengths are super strong. If you just did that, you'd get way more out of it than just trying to go okay, we need to make them better at vertical pulling yeah, absolutely.

Danielle Spurling: 43:17

I mean, everything that you've touched on today is just so pertinent to everyone that listens to this show, because I think we focus so much on what we're doing in the water and we've got a lot of faults in that in our own things. I know that recently I've been trying out those little EO handsets and I've got a lot of problems with force that I'm not pushing in the right direction and I'm losing force as I go and early vertical forearm. But part of that is my range of motion in my shoulder because you know, a few years ago I had a bit of bursitis. So I've got to think about doing that on land first, as you say that's why it really hit home when I saw that post and then transferring that into the water and thinking about how that's going to work, because then I'll be able to get my shoulder into a better position and I'll be able to get the catch the right way yeah, you'll actually 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 a master's swimming podcast predominantly, so it's easy to reference the masters and they're prime candidates for this topic. Anyway, you know, I don't know many master swimmers who haven't had issues in their shoulders at some point or haven't had issues somewhere in some point. And what happens when we have um issues or injuries or your pain in certain areas is our body then goes to protect that area and by shutting that area down. I don't know many injuries, apart from tears, where you get more range of motion and afterwards, and even in tears, the body will lock that, lock everything down to protect the tear. So you know, I don't and that becomes the response and the pattern that is developed neurologically 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 open it up in more comfortable areas, such as on land, and get the range there and teach it that it's okay and and reinforce patterns that way before it's going to trust it doing the thing that hurt it at the start of everything anyway.

Ryan Evernden: 45:28

So it's great that you mentioned your bursitis, because that gives me an easy way to talk about it is. Bursitis is a killer for a lot of people, because the way that you're going to get rid of a bursitis is through rest, because it's the inflammation of a cat like somewhere in the joint. So you have to let that inflammation go down before you can start implementing the load. But what happens is and a lot of the time, this is what what I've seen and in my experience I'm obviously not my I'm not a physio, so don't take this as prescriptions or anything like that to people listening. But what? What we see a lot is they do the deload and then they get back into it and they progress up and then it's some like they get to a point and it hurts again and it's. They go oh, it's okay, I've just got to work through it a little bit. And they work through it a little bit. What makes it get more tight and more agitated instead of going okay, we hit this level. This is where our body was comfortable. Right now, let's do a tiny deload and just make it feel good again, but we can keep swimming a little bit and then we're going to push it a little bit further and just taking that more. You know you can make five steps forwards and take two steps back. You've still gone three steps forwards and you can. You can continue to do that over time and you're gonna make progress.

Ryan Evernden: 46:44

No one's like it's that crazy image of like. You know, this is what my plan was and it's got the guy at the start line and the finish line. It's a direct line versus what my plan, what what actually ended up happening. It's like squiggles everywhere and you know it goes down the cliff, up a cliff, around a corner, you know, ends up like falling in a trap and then gets out of it and then finally makes it. You know it's never going to be as easy as just. We start here and we're going to finish there. There's always going to be something that pops up. There's always going to be something that we're going to have to deal with and adapt from and then move forwards.

Ryan Evernden: 47:18

But you know, just allowing people to be okay with that and being very clear with them is like this is probably going to happen. We hope it doesn't, because that would be awesome, but it's probably going to happen. When it does happen, this is what we're going to do and these are the reasons why, in a different topic entirely to this question comes in is, you know, I've learned more about convincing people to buy into a program through sell, through sales, through sales calls, than I ever did on gym floor, because finding out what they need to do and then giving them a reason and convincing them that this is and explaining it and giving them a pathway and all these different things is so easy and makes life so much easier in the long run for these people when they actually know what might, what, all the potential things are going to happen without scaring them. You know, like we've got to give them these, these strategies to deal with things without scaring people. But that comes from honesty and being like this is going to happen, but that's okay because we know at some point, if it happens, we can do this and it's going to be okay.

Ryan Evernden: 48:30

And if that plan works doesn't work, we've got this plan and that's where you know, the experience of having people that work directly in the sport kind of really comes in and has that aspect of of both side of things like I'm not on pool deck that often anymore because I've got guys who are way better at it and can be there more on pool deck for me now. But from the years of coaching, like you know juniors and adults and stuff like that, and age groupers and and some open you know it's really important to kind of go this is how the water works, this is how the land works. How can we meet in the middle and make that team work to get this person the result they're after? And that's what this is all about. You know, keeping swimmers swimming for longer is realistically what we should all be aiming to do.

Danielle Spurling: 49:16

And that's exactly what everyone listening, all our master swimmers, want to be doing. They want to be swimming well into their 90s.

Ryan Evernden: 49:23

Our program is fixed around the same. We want to create swimmers for life.

Danielle Spurling: 49:26

Well, ryan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I mean, all your pearls of wisdom are going to help so many people and what we'll do is we'll put a link to your website in the show notes of today's episode and people can reach out to you for more information and you can work with them individually if they would like that. So thank you so much 100%.

Ryan Evernden: 49:49

No worries, guys. Thank you for having me again and 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 to today's episode. Don't forget to check out Ryan's website at formidablestrengthcomau to get more of his pearls of wisdom, and follow him on Insta and Facebook at Swimming Strong. Till next time, happy swimming and bye for now.