Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast with Ryan Evernden - Swimming Strength and Conditioning Coach

What if we told you that the secret to becoming a master swimmer lies not only in the pool, but also in the gym? This week, we’re chatting with Ryan Everdon, a National Finalist swimmer from Australia, as he reveals his unique philosophy on strength training for master swimmers. Ryan takes us on a journey from his swimming roots in the UK, through overcoming injuries, to reaching the pinnacle of his career. His story serves as an inspiring reminder that we can all tap into our resilience and passion to achieve our goals.

Ryan shares the golden nuggets of strength training and the 'goat of all exercises'. As we unpack the importance of consistency, recovery, and focus on small details, you'll discover that achieving peak performance isn’t about doing more, but about doing better. Ryan underscores the impact of strength and conditioning in enhancing power and recovery abilities, equipping swimmers to reach their optimal state in the water.

The chat doesn't stop at the philosophy, we get into the how-tos of strength training for master swimmers. We delve into the right balance between exertion and rest in the gym, with a keen focus on mobility and recovery. Ryan shares his expert advice on tailoring training programs to individual athletes, and the fine art of balancing the demands of each swimming stroke. This episode is a treasure trove of practical tips, whether you’re a master swimmer or an aspiring one. So, let's dive in and swim towards success!

You can connect with Ryan:
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**Disclaimer: Please check with your medical professional before embarking on any exercise program.  This podcast does not claim to be an expert in providing health advice.  We are merely sharing personal stories of the swimming community.

Transcript

Danielle Spurling: 0:05

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. 

As master swimmers, we squeeze a lot into our week and of course, pool sessions are our top priority. But to get faster in the pool, we can't ignore strength training, and that is where my guest today, Ryan Evernden, comes in. 

Ryan shared his philosophy on strength training, but we dove deeper into what you need to include in your program and we find out which exercise Ryan recommends, as the goat of all exercises, to include in that program. Let's hear from Ryan now. 

Hi, Ryan, welcome to the podcast.

Ryan Evernden: 0:59

Hey how you going.

Danielle Spurling: 0:59

Yeah, good thanks. Where are you joining us from today?

Ryan Evernden: 1:04

Currently sitting to you in my office in Perth, western Australia.

Danielle Spurling: 1:07

Yeah, have you managed to get any exercise in yourself over the last few days? Yeah, actually, this is good timing.

Ryan Evernden: 1:14

I went for a run this morning so I've currently got a new like a baby I guess, like it's a brand new baby, so we're just trying to figure out. My wife is looking to try and get back into a bit of swimming. We're both swimmers originally and she's wanting to get back into it. I gave it a go last year with my master's endeavours and then, you know, broken wrist and that was the end of that and now she's. You know it's her time she's had a baby, it's her time to have a goat. So what we're trying to do now is work out ways where I can have the baby and still get some exercise in. So my gym and the pool that we work out of. So we have both sides to that. The gym is only about 4Ks away from the pool. So what I did this morning I got up really, really early. I parked at the gym, i ran from the gym to the pool, met her there for the first session, picked up her, the dog, the baby, and then I walked back and you know it took me about an hour and a half of enjoyment, i guess. So I got to get with, you know, my daughter and my main daughter, the dog peanut.

Danielle Spurling: 2:16

That sounds good.

Ryan Evernden: 2:18

So that's my main thing at the moment. Otherwise it's a bit ad hoc. I'm doing a bit of gym work and stuff like that, but I guess life is really getting in is a big excuse of mine at the moment, so it's something that I'm really looking at home back into. I'm not in the water at the moment, for sure.

Danielle Spurling: 2:33

Before we talk about your coaching and strength and conditioning, I wanted to have a bit of a talk about your own background in swimming. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey.

Ryan Evernden: 2:43

Yep, okay. So like it goes back to when we moved out here. So in the UK I was pretty rubbish at swimming from my recollection of it. I didn't really enjoy it. It wasn't something I was keen on at all. And then when I was, when we moved over here, i did the interhouse swimming, like swimming was an actual carnival that we did over here and stuff like that. So I did you know the interhouse carnival was a primary school student and they said look, you probably want to join the school swimming squad. I joined the school swimming squad. That led to me joining a club and then you know, onwards and upwards from there down in Bumbary, as an age athlete I am, i was, i'm a 200 breaststroker, so I'm a bit strange. And as an age athlete you know national finalists. A lot of the times got to swim with guys like like Lenny Bremer and Tommy Sosipto from WA, and then obviously Jake Packard was one of the other blokes that I got to tussle with every now and again and had a very happy age group career. Then in year 12 I did my ACO. I had a complete neary construction. Well, kind of is a nice bit to mention. That's when I started really trying to figure out things in the gym. I was so desperate to get back as quickly as possible that I was, you know, doing a bit of self research, trying to figure out, you know, how can I make this leg stronger so I can get back in the water quickly? what kind of cardio can I do to, you know, so I don't lose too much fitness? so I ended up doing a fair bit of work on a bike used to ride my bike to training, do the rehab in the water, go up to the gym, do some gym work just and kept it very similar to the training times that I would have been going to the pool anyway. That helped me really keep some connection to it. And then I moved to Perth in 2012. I joined Perth City swimming club with who was the head coach at the time, matt McGee, and that was with guys like Brianna Frossell and Simon Houtenga and guys like that, and with Andy and we national finalists for you know a good many years there and just kept getting repeat injuries. So I mean that kind of sums up and it gives you a nice little story of you know how I've ended up where I am, because I kind of just went well. I would hate for other swimmers to have the experience that I had as an athlete not. The good bits are all excellent. I love the good bits, but I definitely feel like if there was more direction or guidance, more education around, you know how strength conditioning could be very good for preventing injury and you know how to do it effectively and not overdo. It was one of the things that I struggled with big time recovery aspect. Stuff like that would really benefit and, you know, hopefully put a lot more longevity to a lot of careers and allow people to actually fulfill some of their potential and not get too busted up all the time. So and that's ended me up with formidable strength conditioning over here in Perth, where we now specialize entirely on essence C for swimming athletes and we also have our own pool program that's based out of Perth City swimming club as well.

Danielle Spurling: 5:50

Wow, it's a great journey to get to that point. Did you study strength conditioning at university? How did you get into that side of it? I know you did your own research, but how did you officially get sort of into that role?

Ryan Evernden: 6:05

Yep, so I am a now very open person who has ADHD and so university and stuff like that was really hard. I was never medicated to a university. It's only since, you know, in the last year that I managed to get you know, an adult diagnosis and medicated and stuff like that. That's really helped. But during my university days, that lack of structure that everyone told me would be perfect for me based on my swimming and stuff like that you'd love it, you'd be able to train and go to uni and then come back have naps, blah, blah, blah that lack of structure I just couldn't, couldn't maintain it for me. It was really hard. So I went down another route. I went and did my cert three and four in personal training instead of exercise science, and I did external PDs and my ASCA qualification, so Australian strength conditioning association. At the time I was also swim coaching on pool deck, so I was at the time a bronze level swimming coach through Australian swimming and coaching association what I believe is called something else now. So that's that's my kind of formal qualification. Other than that is just a lot of reps working with a lot of swimmers, figuring out a lot of issues and not being afraid to, you know, seek mentorship from, from guys who had worked in S&C for a long time, guys like Christian Woodford over in the US, over in Melbourne, who works a lot with AFL and footy, and a lot of other guys as well. That probably don't need to mention all of them, but there's a lot of other guys in the world that I seek a lot of mentorship from and try to burn my education through practicality and stuff like that, rather than necessarily going to uni and doing a masters in the S&C.

Danielle Spurling: 7:40

Yeah well, I think that's really important. I mean, you've got all that experience on the ground and you've used your own experience from swimming and I assume, and I know, that that would actually help the athletes that you work with as well.

Ryan Evernden: 7:52

I find it very beneficial. I had a lot, of, a lot of ability to relate to athletes, especially when they get injured, i think. Relate to. I think it's something that we also need to be careful of is my experience is definitely not going to be their experience and their experience is definitely not my experience but offering some advice around the way and being opening yourself to be a bit vulnerable with the athletes really helps. I guess, like something that I've found over the years that a lot of pool coaches aren't necessarily open to do. Offer up some vulnerability around how I felt when I was injured and how the struggle is being injured as an athlete who wants to achieve big things can put you through and building your way through that and then relaying that and communicating that to athletes of all different age groups. I don't just work with the guys who go to open nationals and are looking for Australian teams. We work with a lot of masters athletes as well, but it's just, i think it's invaluable and I think that's where a lot of coaches fall down is their ability to actually communicate and deliver when it is required, when the athlete's biggest time of need is What's generally when they're injured or they're really struggling with something.

Danielle Spurling: 9:11

I think that's a really pertinent point to taking everyone's case study individually, because we're not all the same and it's great to have a coach that links into that with you. It sounds like that's what's happening over at Feminable Strength. What are you doing? much something, coaching, as well as the strength and conditioning at the moment.

Ryan Evernden: 9:33

I'm a number one cover at the moment for the swim side of things. I'm not currently on pool deck officially as a coach day in, day out. I have done a lot of being junior coaching and stuff like that and a lot of adult coaching before, but no, i'm very aware that me as a resource is finite, is not finite. I think There is limited amount of me is what I'm trying to say, and there are better people for certain roles than I am. We have Owen Carroll at Perth City Swimming Club that we employ to run all of our programs at Perth City for the adults, the juniors age and open guys.

Danielle Spurling: 10:13

What do you see is the difference in working with a Masters athlete as opposed to an age group? What's the main difference that you see?

Ryan Evernden: 10:23

There's a lot of circumstantial differences, but a lot of the underlying things are still the same, it's just the environments are different. I'll try and make that a bit more clear in a second. For an age group athlete, i think their ability to recover for an age group athlete and a Masters athlete are the two things that they both struggle with the most. Open athletes tend to get it, or they get very good at it, because they have more opportunity to be able to recover. They understand that this is an important part. With the Masters guys and the age group guys, i think because they have school or work, they're there to environments what can be highly stressful for both individuals. They never account that into their training loads. I guess The main point of difference would be as a Masters athlete, your ability to recover becomes way more important because you can't get away with it When age group athletes. It's not ideal but they can get away with it to a certain degree. The Masters guys' recovery for us is a very big thing that we push on them, understanding that you need to accommodate not just for your training stress, but you also need to accommodate for your emotional wellbeing and your mental wellbeing in terms of work environments, family environments and training environments, and not just consider your workload as training itself. Things that we find with Masters athletes is they're very willing to do the work and they have a much… This might be a generational thing, i don't know, but they're very interested in doing more, more, more, more, more to get better, and better and better, rather than what is…. My philosophy is doing better, better, better to get better. We were talking about it just beforehand with an email that I read earlier today and it was talking about the oldest tortoise and I can't remember the exact age of the tortoise and it was comparing it to the average age of a hare. It was going back to that old tortoise and the hare parable fable and it was talking about this tortoise has lived to 100, whatever it is 90 years old or I can't remember the exact number and because its actions are so… It understands, and where slow, consistent actions get the results that it needs to survive and thrive, where a hare will be fleeting all around the place, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's very much the same. We're talking about the difference between athletes at Masters level, age level and everywhere that succeed and those that necessarily fall down. Is there consistency, to apply details consistently day on, day out. And by smaller details I'm talking about stuff like making sure that sleep is happening correctly, making sure that calorie intake is substantial enough for the demands of what they're doing in the pool and out of the pool, giving themselves the opportunity to be able to have a moment with themselves to be able to think and process and not just go and giving yourself opportunity to socialise. Those kind of things And the consistency that you can do. That, i personally believe, outweigh the benefits of you just consistently getting… trying to look for more work or more kilometres or working at a higher intensity. The smaller details right more consistently will get you a far bigger yield than just trying to look at the growth improving on the growth picture. Most people are already doing the growth things well. That's very known and very easy to replicate in a lot of cases and take it to an S&C point of view. For a long time, s&c for swimmers has been… to some degree it still is. In some populations It's seen as this optional extra. Obviously, i'm an S&C provider, so I've got some buyers here, but I strongly disagree. I think the research will tell you that as well. The strength component of swimming and just giving yourself a better general strength output will not just increase your amount of power that you can put in the water. That's very short-sighted to think that way. It's more about your ability to be able to have bigger capacity so your recovery can be better, your thresholds can be higher because you have that more output that you can put down. As your output increases, your previous threshold for output will increase with it. Therefore, your new output, your new threshold, is higher. Your ability to maintain your body is a huge part. I say what I believe that I do more than anything else in terms of my role as an S&C provider and all the other stuff that we do at Fornitable, is we give people the greatest opportunity possible to perform it in the water at their optimal state. If that comes from us giving them a better plan just like dry land warm up beforehand. If that's us making sure their shoulders can stabilize when under fatigue, making sure that they can produce more power in the water, i always say that the S&C side of things isn't necessarily going to make you a better swimmer, but it's giving you the opportunity to become a better swimmer. I think that's something that I firmly believe in, and I think that it's something that people can probably Misunderstand. If that makes sense, i don't feel that at no stage will lifting more weight directly correspond to you being able to swim faster, but it will give you the opportunity. If you are stronger, you will have a much bigger ability to be able to produce force, and if that is honed in the right way into the water, you'll then get that output and you'll be able to tap into that potential.

Danielle Spurling: 16:24

Yeah, well, that's actually. I'm glad you brought that up, because I was going to ask that very question How do you hone that kind of skill to transfer into the water? So I'm just trying to think about as a masters athlete, which you pointed out. A lot of people are working and they've got lots of other things in their life and their main thing is to get to the pool for swimming. Would you recommend that they're in the gym two to three times a week, or can you still get gains from once a week? People always struggle to sort of get there. What's your philosophy on that?

Ryan Evernden: 16:57

Okay, i try. This is I don't want to. I try not to give wishy-washy answers, but the first answer we're going to give you is a wishy-washy answer. It depends, it very much depends. So, for example, yeah, let's take some examples here. We've got Andy Donaldson's been on your podcast before. He won't mind me talking about you, about him. Andy trains two times a week in the gym when he's in camp in Perth, So when he's not gallivanting off around the world breaking world records, doing ocean swims for the Ocean Seven series. And a quick plug for Andy If anyone wants to follow Andy, andy Hanne's adventure, andy swimming I think it is on Instagram and he's doing the Ocean Seven swims to raise money for the Black Dog Institute what's a mental health charity? So go check that out as an aside. But he trains twice a week when he is in camp in Perth, but when he is away and we're managing his load when he's away, sometimes we do one a week, sometimes we do five a week. It will very much depend on what we have available to us and the amount of load that I need him to get done during that time period. So five weeks probably an exaggeration. I don't think he's ever done five. But, for example, he can get off a plane, off the plane. We need him to do something to make sure that we're getting him moving again before he gets in the water, just to open himself up. I count that as a session. Some people may go well, that's just mobility and a bit of activation. Does that really count? It, 100% counts. You only have so much capacity to do stuff. Therefore, everything you do must be considered. So your off the plane work is to freshen you up, to make you more. Have that opportunity to get into your training regime as quickly as possible, and that may only take 20 minutes, but that still counts. Then he will do. I count his dry land preparation as part of his swimming session, just for clarification on that. Then he may do a more load intensive session three days post-flight if we've got a seven day turnaround, just so we make sure that we are still staying in contact with the joints. The joints are still staying nice and solid, everything's all good. Then we go to maybe a priming session before he gets into his race. What will be a last bit of mobility work to see if there's anything that we need to be fixing, and some neurological like throwing a ball, jumping stuff like that, just to make sure he's firing up. Then he can go do a swim and then post-swing he will have something to do as well. So if that was seven days, that's, i think that was four sessions that he would potentially be doing. But there's different examples of how that may work Like. It depends exactly on the capacity of the athlete, what they're doing and what event they're training for. I always say that to get better at the thing that you're trying to get better at, you need to make sure that that is the priority. So, for example, if you're looking to get better at swimming, doing six gym sessions a week and six in the pool if that's a load that anyone does is probably going to be counterintuitive to you getting better in the water. I like two. Two is a very good number. I feel like two is very manageable on a physical level a stress level, time and it doesn't have them coming in the gym too much and it still makes the gym important. We get what we need out of it, but we're not overloading the athlete. The end of the day they've got to perform in the water. Then performing in the gym is important, but for us. It's about slow, consistent gains over an extended period of time, rather than absolutely blitzing them every training session, every time they come in the gym, because if they're too tired from the gym, they're not going to be good in the water. So that's probably one of the main ones that you need to make sure that you're considering when you're looking to transfer this stuff into the water. Not doing like going in the gym and not doing anything and not getting any work done isn't going to help you, but going in the gym and absolutely crushing yourself every time you go in the gym is probably not going to help you either. You're probably putting yourself at a bit of risk that way. You need to find the sweet spot in the middle. Now, the second thing that we need to make sure that we're doing. There's three things. So if we forget the third, remind me. The second thing is something that we make sure that we do, and we've got a free set process for this, and it needs to be ticked off before the third thing becomes relevant. So we need to ensure that we have adequate range of motion for the demands of the sport. So for swimming, that means having your arm above, being able to get your arm above your head is critical. Being able to have your hips in a way that can get enough stability and kick into your stroke, being able to have enough thoracic rotation they're probably the three major ones. So short range of motion, thoracic rotation and hip mobility Make sure that those things are adequate. That's your number one in this free step process. Number two is the ability to centrate your joints. So for those who don't understand that jargon, what's probably no one to centrate your joint would be to lock your so free, your shoulder, for example. If you raise your arms up above your head and I'm doing this on screen, i don't know if this goes out on YouTube or anything but it goes shoulders up and then you feel like your shoulder is lifted up and it's not quite any capsule. Yeah, everything's extended beneath it. Being able to pull that down into position and lock it into place and be able to hold that as you apply force, that's joint centration And the next one is to be able to apply that force or be able to have some force to apply. So that's range of motion, joint centration and force development. Okay, you can't start the force development without having the range of motion. You can't start the force development without being able to centrate your joint. If you do, you end up just you're missing steps in this process. Okay, so that's your second step of this free step process. I guess The third thing that we need to make sure and this is where it gets a bit fancy and technical and yada, yada, yada yada is identifying general movements, general specific movements and then specific movements that you can then apply into your training. Now, remembering that if you haven't, if you can't do the things in step two, this becomes redundant. This is where we talk about general movements, general specific and then specific movements. So, with general movements, that would be say squat, deadlift, pull-up, rows, carries, those kind of things, the normal generic gym exercises. They are just there so you can get stronger. Okay, that's where we're looking at strength. Now we can apply different variables to that to make them general, specific. Now, general specific exercises are generally, but can be general exercises as well. Are generally exercises like your med bull, froze, rotate, med bull rotations, you know, apply those stuff like that? Okay, they're things that are. You know, taking some of the concepts that would make the exercise specific, but not all of them. Use pull ups as a prime example That might be easier. We've got pull ups, then we'll probably have med bull throw down. So overhead throw straight down. That's so we've got the strength component on a vertical pull exercise. Then we've got a velocity complimentary exercise for a vertical pull. What would be us specific? It's kind of a trick question. Actually, swimming, that's the actual specific exercise. There is literally no exercise on the planet that is more specific to what you're about to do than actually performing the exercise like the skill itself. The skill itself is swimming. So example would be for this we are looking to so you work backwards, we're looking to increase the pull ability of an athlete, Okay, okay. So the specific exercise would be to pull like this, the freestyle overhead pull. Let's say, okay, what would be a general specific exercise? Single arm med bull throw, just keeping it easy General exercise, lat, pull down, pull up. Now, with that general exercise we need to make sure that we that general overlaps to the being able to develop force from our previous thing. But for that to occur we need to make sure that we can centrate the joint And we also. We can't centrate the joint unless we have adequate range of motion to get our arm above our head See how that kind of just works all the way down.

Danielle Spurling: 25:53

Yeah, and in those exercises that you just mentioned. So just the general exercise of the pull up or the lat pull down and then into the med bull throw, are they two things that you'd put in your program at the same time, or would that be something you do, your general block and then you'd move into the more specific? So how does that work?

Ryan Evernden: 26:14

Here we go, here we go, here's another depends. It depends Because, for example, you may have like for different stages of what is really good about a swimming calendar is it is so clear cut when the main competitions are something that you don't have in other sports and you do have in swings, i guess, like team sports have their finals but they have an entire season to get through before they get to the finals. So it makes it kind of trick like you have to be balancing a lot of different things there. With swimming, for example, we have maybe two like the age group and over the age group and open guys. We have two competitions a year. Unless you're at an international level, then it gets a little bit more tricky. But for the generic age group and open athlete, you'll have your short course nationals and your long course nationals, or your short course states and your short course nationals or your long course nationals Masters guys. It's generally almost just one realistic event a year. I do believe you guys do have short course nationals, yeah.

Danielle Spurling: 27:13

Every four years there is master short course nationals. but they're just at the time of nationals, So they go long course and then short course, but at the same time.

Ryan Evernden: 27:22

So for masters it is pretty much just.

Danielle Spurling: 27:25

There's nationals once a year and then there might be a state long course or short course.

Ryan Evernden: 27:30

Yeah, and sometimes states is after nationals for some reason.

Danielle Spurling: 27:33

Yeah, it changes all the time.

Ryan Evernden: 27:36

Yeah, and it's pretty fluid. But the national event because of the preparation that is needed to hold a national event, we have a general idea of when that will be most years and we can plan for that, So we can go all right. So what do we need for this athlete to be good Come competition date? okay, And let's use masters nationals as an example, What is quite close.

Danielle Spurling: 27:58

Yeah, it's in April.

Ryan Evernden: 28:00

Yeah, it's quite close, it's the same. I think it's the exact same date as open nationals as well, and transplant games.

Danielle Spurling: 28:07

Yes, I think so. It's just after Easter.

Ryan Evernden: 28:11

Yeah, that's all right. It's a triple whammy for my life right now because we have aged nationals then open, but also my classes and transplant going on. What's a lot of time to be alive for Ryan. But going back to my original thing that we were talking about, and how do we prepare and putting those exercises in order, i guess, is what we're talking about. I would look to apply the same system that we just talked about, but just try and build it out over a year. Does that make sense? So at the start of the process of us coaching an athlete, i'm making sure that joint range of motion is adequate If they can tick off that box off. We're making sure that the priority of the training session becomes okay. Let's make sure that we can centrate all these joints and get good centration and hold that centration under load. Next bit then becomes let's get these guys up to a strength standard that is good right Now. As I'm saying this, i understand that that may sound like for the first, if you're doing a four-week block, all we're doing is mobility work for a four-week block, right? Not the case, let's. We'll use the word priority, i guess. So we're prioritising range of motion. We are still doing general strength movements and stuff like that, but we are limiting the way that we do it to make sure that it is safe and we're getting good results out of it.

Danielle Spurling: 29:32

So if you're concentrating on the range of motion and the general in that four-week block, would the specificity of, say, a mid-ball that would sit at the side until you'd increased your strength?

Ryan Evernden: 29:44

Not necessarily. So, yeah, i'll finish this bit and then we'll get on to that, because that's a very good point as well. So what we're talking about here is we prioritise certain factors at certain times of the year. So even better, like for right now, power output and specificity is how is that? For me, saying that word correctly, specificity is the key aspect of right now, where all our guys go into nationals. So they're doing a lot of throwing, they're doing a lot of jumping, but they're always doing their own water work, right, that's the main thing to remember. They're always doing that. but we're doing a lot of throwdowns, we're doing a lot of rotation work, we're doing a lot of jumping and stuff like that to make sure that explosive and powerful and ready to do, ready to fulfil the demands that they are about to have. So that's the key consideration right now. Now we're not doing strength work at the same time, like we are still even know that we're still doing a general straight Yeah. The variation and the priority for certain aspects of the trade and gets highlighted more So. For example, right now they're still doing pull-ups, they're still doing their RDLs, they're still doing their rows, they're still doing all of these things. But we might be pairing them, say, we may be going from a pull down straight into a med bull like a throw down.

Danielle Spurling: 31:06

Yeah, that makes more sense.

Ryan Evernden: 31:07

We're getting a bit of contrast work in there as well. Does that make more sense? But you know we still want to make sure the strength is there, because if the strength goes away, the other aspects do as well. So the best thing about strength is, you know it's kind of key for endurance, power and power. It's the one thing that if you increase strength, power and endurance are both going to increase, just pro proximity, And then you need to be specific to the nature of those two aspects if that makes sense.

Danielle Spurling: 31:37

So but I suppose my question is now do you, do you still overload in that? in that time, would you still overload a variable, a variable each week in your, in your general strength, leading internationals? When we're just focusing about general strength just in this time leading up to nationals, when you said there's going to be more focus on the specific exercises, like the throw dance or pairing them, would you still be overloading your general exercises during that time Or would they be at a stable level now?

Ryan Evernden: 32:07

Oh, so yeah, very good point. So always, always, prioritise one thing They're still doing it and we still look for slight increases in it, but we're not forcing it, or we never force it anyway but we still like, we're not neglecting the ability to still try and get a little bit stronger and try and get a little bit more out of it. But we are, you know, for example, not as focused on the general, specific lifts as we would be normally. And this probably goes back to another point that I was briefly touched on before about how you can make general exercises a bit more specific. So, for something to become specific, we need to mimic the intensity of the movement, the direction of the movement, the speed of the movement and the duration of the movement. Now, that's why swimming itself is the most specific thing, because it's very hard to replicate that outside of anything other than swimming itself. Okay, but what we can do is say, for a squat, for example, we can it's very hard to mimic. Apply that to a breaststroke kick, maybe. For this, this example Okay, it's very hard to have the same speed while squatting as you would have a breaststroke kick because you're under load. Okay, it's very hard to have the duration because, like squatting for 30 seconds is a lot of squats. Right, you can do it and I've tried it before. I don't think it's that beneficial. You can put your eggs in some other basket, but we can try and mimic the intensity and, by intensity, the output that we're trying to put into it. So if we're doing a maximal breaststroke kick, we're trying to move ourselves as quickly in space as possible and trying to apply as much force against the resistance as possible. That is the water. At this stage, when you're kicking, the resistance is the water in swimming and it acts differently, but that's probably an entire different thing in itself. We're resisting the floor, we're pushing against the floor, getting the action reaction to stand up. So what we do look for, instead of going okay, we want this to be very strength based. What is typically moving the bar slowly and not as quickly because of the load that you're under, we go what we want to do. We're not going to get the exact speed, but we want to make sure that we're moving faster. So we measure bar speed instead, so we can go measure some bar speed and then we can go jump into your vertical jump. Yeah, it's, it's. You never want to just throw something out, and there are different ratios for different athletes and different swimming profiles in terms of their event and their stroke that you need to be more biased towards. But the best programs are the ones that cover as many bases as possible to make sure that you're a more complete athlete So you can have the opportunity to pour them in the water. If you have strength deficiency somewhere, there is more likely than not to be a compromise somewhere else. It's just making sure that everything is strong enough that those compromises no longer matter. Breaststroke and the rest of the world is very easy for this when you look at lower body or just in general. So breaststroke is a very lower body or it's probably the only that is very low body orientated. The kick is probably more output in most cases than the arm stroke Okay, so the kick becomes very big focus. So with the breaststrokers we spend way more time on their legs and actual the squat itself than we would say a free style where they probably not going to squat that often And if they do, they're doing in a uni, like a unilateral fashion. So we're working one side, not the like. We're doing it to balance out. So they're still getting the strength there, but we're making sure it's more termed towards balance Where, as example, a freestyle butterfly and a backstroker is very much on propulsion dominant. So they do more pull ups, they do more of those kind of things and they do stuff like RDLs instead, because an RDL works really well getting the hip drive that they need. So they're also centrating the joint in the shoulder while maintaining strong positional line with iron through the spine. Okay, so a lot of people, a lot of the time, you'll see our athletes doing a lot of RDL movements because we've got a lot of really easy variations that we can go with that And it's a core based movement that I think you know a lot of people should do more often. You've got to understand that the demands of each stroke is different. The demands of each athlete will be different, and then the distances also come into play. For example, like, for example, going back to Andy, he's getting a lot of airtime for someone who's not on the podcast. Going back to Andy, for example, he's an ultra marathon swimmer and we have a few of these guys. So, yeah, he does a bit of jumping work, like he will do a bit of explosive work like slams and stuff like that. But that's because he needs this like, but that's not the priority for him if that makes sense. And we do that, that bit of like you know, throwing work and stuff like that, mainly so we can teach the body to centrate where the velocity is really high to help prevent velocity based injuries. That's why he does that, because his arm pull is still at a faster rate than what he would do a pull up. So we've got to kind of figure out something with that. So a med bull throw down, make sure that he gets the above, centrates the joint and applies that force really quickly down. But a lot of the time he's doing a lot of stuff to make sure that joint sensation is right, body position awareness is good, like he's very strong through, you know, his trunk, not his core. I think the core is a bad word to use the trunk because we need to think about all the muscles from shoulders to hips and making sure that they stay in alignment, and the abs, for example. What the core normally gets referred to is a very small and not so significant muscle group compared to, like the muscles that hold your spot, like the muscles in your back and your obliques what is technically an ab. But you know, those those aspects are really important for Andy I like, who is 1500 meters to my, 200 meters from our, who's been on a couple of Australian B teams and probably will go much further. For him we need to make sure that jumping is a priority in his program. He's a pool athlete. He needs to apply those things. You know the Masters guys go to Masters Nationals. This is something that is probably really important to note with the Masters guys that you know jumping and stuff like that probably isn't something that Masters athletes are that comfortable with. That I've noticed. Anyway, you know it's not something that they're going to be wanting to do because they've probably lost a fair bit of explosiveness with age. So you've got to make sure that they're doing it but they're doing it in a way that's comfortable to them and you're not overloading it. Again, it all comes back to load management and managing stresses that you put onto someone and their ability to recover from those stress.

Danielle Spurling: 39:09

Yeah, look, i'm interested to know when you say optimally two sessions a week, are those two sessions completely different from each other, or are they the same exercises repeated twice a week?

Ryan Evernden: 39:23

Okay, cool, they'll be different, very different. So go over a little bit of how we structure programs. We always write three sessions a week, but we make them do two. Okay, so we write free sessions a week. So we have Monday. What is their primary exercises that they have to do? These are the exercises that are directly focused on their swimming profile and we need to make sure that that is done for their say, if you're a 50 meter freestyle, they're the exercises that we want you to do as a 50 meter freestyle to get X, y and Z at this time of year. Session two is more geared towards their individual profile based on testing, but it's still and it normally cover and normally because of that it can be the opposite of what they were doing in the other exercises. So we get a bit of balance there. Okay, session two is a less of a priority session than session one and session two can generally be at a lesser intensity than session one. Session one is probably the hardest session of the week. Then we have session three. What is always there? in case they have a competition on the weekend? With swimming, there's always competition that's going on. It's very hard to keep track of all of them, apart from the major ones. So we have that session there. What is just to get them more explosive and deload them a little bit. Because what people also don't realize is that not every week they're competing, so they're not adapted to completely back up week after week after week when there's competitions going on. So you need to have a slight deload. It's not a taper, it's just mitigating risk and managing load. So we have a slight deload in that session. They'll do less work but it'll be at a very high intensity level to make sure that they have very high output, to make sure that neurologically they're firing and ready to go for their swim on the weekend.

Danielle Spurling: 41:14

Now I think that's a really good point And I think that's some. a lot of people need to put that into their prug and that deloading type of thing, the day, maybe the day before, you have that sort of mini meet I'm not talking about nationals, but I think is that mimicking the first session that you would give them of the week or the second session.

Ryan Evernden: 41:35

It's very different. It's very much just slamming stuff down, mobility work and jumping. It'll be very, very specific to like making them move fast and reactive things. It's generally done 24 hours to 48 hours before the meet, because that's where we get that neurological window and they do it Like, for example, these guys will do that session and I keep it very similar, like very similar throughout the year because when they get to nationals that will be their last training session that they do before nationals When they're I make it, so they could probably do it when they're away. But it's very much jumping, throwing, you know a lot of that kind of stuff. So we've got that. So when they go to do that session they kind of subconsciously start thinking oh, we're ready, we've got racing to do in the next 24 to 48 hours. The body starts doing the magic.

Danielle Spurling: 42:25

Yeah, i like that, yeah, absolutely.

Ryan Evernden: 42:28

But listen to your pool coach, because your pool, like this, is the main thing that you need to stress. I am an SNC provider, i'm dictated by, i'm a support person for the guys that do the real work in the water. So make sure that you I wouldn't be self tapering yourself for every mini meet in the water, but in your gym program that probably can be. You know, having a slight D-load the day before, like that week of towards the latter half of the week, could probably be beneficial for your you know ability to recover from the meet itself and be ready for the meet itself. But it doesn't apply to your work. Work in the water. Listen to your primary coach, like this swimming coach for that kind of stuff.

Danielle Spurling: 43:11

Yeah, because all those little mini meets along the way. You're not going to be tapering for those. You're going to tap if nationals you know.

Ryan Evernden: 43:18

What we're doing with that. Session three isn't a taper, It's a priming session. It is there to get you more ready for that competition on the week And we, because we understand load management, we've gone okay, well, we need to manage the load because you're going to be doing more than you normally would over the weekend. That's the only reason it exists. If they're going to do the same, for example, sometimes they do this like we've figured out the load, like in the water, and we go, okay, you're actually probably going to be doing less than what you probably would output on your Saturday morning big, big hit out swim. So we're not going to drop down Like there's no point, The load is going to be the same. But the normal nature of swimming events and stuff like that would probably mean that that's not most of the time the case because, as we said before, you've got emotional stress that you've got to deal with, the psychological stress that you've got to deal with when you're out of meat, no matter what the meat level is, there's still going to be a high level of that than you would at the Saturday morning training session.

Danielle Spurling: 44:17

I think you live for that anyway, knowing that it's a competition.

Ryan Evernden: 44:22

Yeah, and it's a stress response. You know, like that's the whole, that's how it works, like the adrenaline is put out there because you're in a fire flight reflex, what is delivered by an impending stressful situation that your body has to react to. So, like you know, you've got to make sure that you're accommodating for that kind of stuff.

Danielle Spurling: 44:38

Yeah, absolutely. Now, everyone that comes on the podcast. I like to ask them deep dive five questions, And I've made yours a little bit more towards the strength and conditioning side of things And I'm going to change one of them, as I've listened to. you call the core the trunk. So what's your favorite trunk exercise for swimmers that they could put in their strength and conditioning program?

Ryan Evernden: 45:01

My favorite trunk exercise. anything that stop is anti-rotational. So an anti-rotational exercise is to say something like a pile of press or a pile of hold, where you would set a band up on a pole and you would stick your arm out and you've got to stop yourself from rotating. So you've got to hold your hips still facing forwards, feet facing forward, shoulders facing forwards, hands out straight. The band is going at a right angle from your hands and the force of the band would naturally try and make you turn towards the anchor point and you've got to hold yourself there. That would be one of my favorite, Apart from, you know, telling you that an RDL is my favorite, but you know, because it the thing that you've got to understand is that these big compound lifts that you do, the general strength lifts that you're going to do, are probably having more of an effect, when loaded up, on your ability to maintain control through your trunk than any direct core work will, because of the nature of it. There's much higher demand, there's much more things going on, it's much more transferable because there are other aspects moving, like, for example, like your trunk's main. The reason the trunk is so important is it allows you to apply force somewhere and stops that force leaking out So you can maintain that force. To sum it up pretty basically So, apart from just telling you that you know lifting like big strength exercises, my anti-rotational one for swimmers is probably my number one.

Danielle Spurling: 46:34

Yeah, I like the Pelloff one. It's good.

Ryan Evernden: 46:37

Yeah, it's good, and it's good for your shoulder as well. It's got a bit of shoulder work in there as well.

Danielle Spurling: 46:41

Yeah, yeah, because you have to really hold those shoulders in place to be able to hold it, Otherwise the whole thing rips out.

Ryan Evernden: 46:49

Yeah, because if your arms are out in front, the leber length from your shoulder is getting acted upon. So that's there's a bit of, you know, isometric hold for your pec There. what is I like a lot.

Danielle Spurling: 47:00

What about your favourite post? swim snack Like maybe a high protein one. What do you like to eat?

Ryan Evernden: 47:08

I'm very much like an egg, like an egg on toast kind of. That would probably be what I would say egg on toast.

Danielle Spurling: 47:14

Swimmer that you most admire.

Ryan Evernden: 47:17

As someone that I've taken a lot of inspiration from in my, i guess, my life and being in proximity to Heidi Gann probably from Malaysia or swam in Australia, but from Malaysia her ability to be able to manage being a two-time Olympian while studying for law and then being a lawyer and the club president at the same time, and just everything in general, and the personal insights that she's given me over the years from being good friend of her. She's had a lot of positive impacts on my training, like me as a person and as an athlete, and probably as a coach as well, without thinking about it.

Danielle Spurling: 47:55

What's your best exercise for freestyle backstroke butterfly in strength and conditioning? I'll ask a breaststroke one separately, but I know we've mentioned pull-ups and you've mentioned a pallop for the trunk.

Ryan Evernden: 48:09

I'd yell.

Danielle Spurling: 48:09

Yep. Can you explain to everyone who's listening what that is?

Ryan Evernden: 48:14

So an I'd yell is a Romanian deadlift. So it is the deadlift style that you do, where you never touch the floor and you maintain the same angle at the knee joint at all times. So the reason I like it the most is because it takes it ticks off so many boxes in one movement and the variability that you can do with it can be applied across a lot of different things. The reason I'm not saying a pull-up, for example, is because I think pull-ups are done traditionally terribly because everyone believes their necessity. You see, a lot of the time with people doing pull-ups is that they don't centrate the joint and therefore they dump into internal rotation. What is just? you know, I know they're different environments and they are different, but it does reinforce a problem that will be probably manifesting in the water. So that's why pull-ups are my favourite. They are great exercises. Every exercise is good, But an I'd yell, I think. I think you can't get a more value-packed exercise for a lot of different people and a lot of different ranges, or a lot of different people can do, from masters all the way down to age group, than an I'd yell, because you're going to get so much engagement from your hamstrings, hip drive, like for your glutes, because it's a hinge exercise, The amount of isometric strength that you get from the trunk in terms of your erectors and your lats and stuff like that, and it's demand that it puts to centrate the joint under load and the grip strength requirement that you can get once you've started loading it up properly. It just ticks off so many boxes for me and I use it in 90% of my programming because of that. You can also, like you can, whack massive tempos on it if you're really looking at the isometric loading of, you know, of the trunk and the shoulder joint and the wrists and the grip strength component of it. but you can also use it as a very value-packed power output exercise by dropping the load down, holding everything nice and tight and really accelerating through the concentric component of the lift. what would be when the bar comes back up and you stand back up? I just think there's so many. Yeah, it's just got a lot of value to it.

Danielle Spurling: 50:32

That's a good one. I mean, you're talking about the one from the barbell into the pivot point, or are you talking about it with the kettlebell? Either way, either way.

Ryan Evernden: 50:41

Yeah, the modality that you use or the equipment that you use to me is not necessarily that important. If you use a barbell or dumbbells or kettlebells, or a kettlebell or a dumbbell or a band, for example, they give you different things. I guess I do like it a lot. I do use it with a barbell a lot because we can get greater loads from it. We can get greater loads so we have more room to move. But I do really like using it with two dumbbells or two kettlebells because it avoids any. It doesn't allow for one shoulder to be taken over because they're holding two weights independently. But the issue with that is you're probably struggling to load up your hamstrings and your erectors and through your back as much as you probably would with a barbell. But again, what people should take from this podcast the most is there's justifications for everything and if you can't justify the reason you're doing it, you probably shouldn't be doing it at all.

Danielle Spurling: 51:48

Yeah, good point. The last question When you were swimming, what was your favourite breaststroke training set?

Ryan Evernden: 51:57

My favourite breaststroke training set. They're all PTSD for me now, but the one that I don't recommend anyone ever does, but the one that we at the time made us so confident in our ability, was a set where we did 9 400s of breaststroke.

Danielle Spurling: 52:16

Oh my gosh.

Ryan Evernden: 52:17

No 9 2s, 9 2s. We did do it 9 400s at that point, but we did 9 200s And the way that we had to do it it was a efficiency and pace descend. So what you would do you'd be taking stroke count and heart rate for all of them, but you had to descend one to three. And then you had to descend four to six And you'd have to descend one to three, but each round. So there's three rounds to it. You wanted to start faster than you started the first one. The amount of connection we got from at the end of those never mattered how you started the set. You could start and it would be absolutely terrible, but by the end of it you felt so connected and so in tune with what you were doing in the water. For example, i'd most likely on the ninth one, bust out a time where I wouldn't have done that. If I just got up and done a dive 200 max, if that makes sense, and it's all push, start and everything like that, but just the blow that we got from that was really cool, like really useful. Yeah don't do it, though I think it's looking back on it. I think it's probably an excessive set. Yeah, I loved it. Yeah, at the time I loved it. That was the stuff that I really loved as a swimmer. Yeah, but yeah, don't do it. Yeah terrible, crazy, terrible idea.

Danielle Spurling: 53:39

Well, Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It's been great and I really appreciate all the information that you've given. I think everyone listening is going to really enjoy incorporating some of that into their own strength and conditioning.

Ryan Evernden: 53:53

I always say this at the end of any podcast, so if you've got questions, you want more information, please reach out on social media. I'm down as swimming strong, but there's also formidable for middle underscore coaching. That is the business like the bricks and mortar business to it, or email at ryanatformiddlestrengthcomau works well as well.

Danielle Spurling: 54:13

So yeah, we'll put all those links in our show notes So that if people forget, they can have them there written in front of them. So thank you so much. Have a great rest of the day in Perth.

Ryan Evernden: 54:23

Thank you.

Danielle Spurling: 54:24

Okay, thank you, bob. I hope you learned some valuable information to put into your own program from my chat with Ryan today. I love discussing the scientific side of swimming and I really appreciate a Brian's explanation on how to include strength work into a weekly program. We'll put the contact links for Ryan in the show notes of this episode. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram under torpedo swim talk podcast. We post lots of content there that's not in the podcast, and we also pull out things from the podcast and talk about them in our social media. So join along and get involved in the conversation. There's loads of fun and you'll find out even more things to include in your program. Until next time, happy swimming and bye for now.