Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast - Revolutionising Swim Technique with Biomechanical Feedback: An Insightful Talk with EOSportsLab CEO Jaimie Fuller

Can a simple device strapped to your hands revolutionise your swimming technique? On this episode of Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast we bring back Jaimie Fuller, the innovative CEO and co-founder of EO Sports Tech, to explore just that. Jamie takes us on a deep dive into the world of EO swimming handsets, which capture biomechanical feedback at an astonishing 50 times per second. These lightweight handsets analyse critical data points such as force, direction, speed, and hand angle to help swimmers fine-tune their propulsion efficiency. Jaimie breaks down the science behind the data and offers practical insights on how to set up, record, and analyse swim sessions for maximum benefit.

Improving technique isn't just for the young and elite; older athletes can significantly enhance their performance with data-driven adjustments. Using examples from swimming greats like Kyle Chalmers, Jaimie explains how force application and body position impact overall efficiency. We tackle common issues such as inefficient kicking, body drag, and excessive downward force caused by improper elbow positioning. Jaimie provides actionable tips tailored for both sprinters and distance swimmers, emphasising the importance of shoulder flexibility and targeted adjustments to prevent injuries and improve technique.

Finally, we address the gap between perceived and actual swimming techniques. Jaimie shares a compelling case study of a Norwegian swimmer who discovered significant discrepancies in his hand path through video analysis. Combining visual feedback with performance data metrics like stroke rate and hand path consistency, we uncover how even minor head movements during breathing can affect efficiency. Solutions such as using a snorkel for better balance are discussed, offering valuable advice for swimmers facing flexibility issues. Synchronising video footage with performance data, we demonstrate how a comprehensive analysis can lead to substantial improvements in swimming technique. Join us for an episode rich in insights and practical advice, designed to propel your swimming skills to the next level.

Watch this episode on YouTube here

DIscover EOSport here
Follow EOSportsLab on Instagram here

Chapters

• 0:10 Swimming Handset Biomechanical Feedback Technology
• 9:55 Improving Swimming Technique for Older Athletes
• 14:46 Analyzing Swimming Technique for Improvement
• 27:15 Real-Time Swim Stroke Analysis
• 39:51 Swim Stroke Video Analysis Technology

Transcript

Danielle Spurling: 0:10

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. A few weeks ago, we had EO Sports Lab CEO and co-founder, Jaimie Fuller, on the podcast to discuss the EO swimming handsets. They give biomechanical feedback about your stroke directly to an app on your phone. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a technical glitch at my end and we lost the video recording of that interview. A technical glitch at my end and we lost the video recording of that interview. So today I've got Jaimie back on the show in the hot seat and this time there is an accompanying video that you can watch over on our YouTube channel, which displays the data as we speak about it. Let's hear from Jaimie now. Hi Jamie, welcome back to the podcast and thanks for joining us.

Danielle Spurling: 1:06

Thanks, Danielle, lovely to be with you, yeah well, we chatted a little while ago and we had a bit of a technical glitch on my end with the video, so I really wanted to get you back on, because so many people have expressed interest in the handsets that we spoke about, but I thought it would be really useful for everyone to see that data in a video format while we're talking about it. So, for those that just need a brief reminder you're CEO and co-founder of EOSportsTech and you've got these wonderful little handsets that I've been oh, they're disappearing wonderful little handsets that I've been testing out. Can you tell us a little bit about them?

Jaimie Fuller: 1:48

Yeah, of course, danielle, thanks. These devices are worn on the hands, they're very light, they weigh less than a slice of bread each, and they sit in the palm of your hands and they leave your fingers free. Sports tech is evolving rapidly in all different sports, but for whatever reason, swim's being held back. So we've developed these to replicate. And what we're talking about here, danielle, is Newton's third law, and Newton's third law is very simple. It says for every force or action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and what that means is, if I want to swim in that direction, I want my hand moving in that direction, and my hand moving sideways or too much down is not sending me forward.

Jaimie Fuller: 2:41

So these devices, they do some really special stuff, stuff. So they take measurements 50 times a second. So it's 50 hertz, 50 times a second, and if you can imagine, measuring not just the amount of force that you're pushing through your hands but the direction that your hand is moving, the speed that your hand is moving, the angle of your hand and what the angle of attack is, plus the position of your hand as you're going through that stroke path. We compile that data, we process it and we present it to the swimmer, the athlete or the coach so they can see very clearly, in minute detail, exactly what's going on below the surface of the water.

Jaimie Fuller: 3:30

Now, this is about just the hands and it's about propulsion, and we know that there are other contributory factors to swimming. There's the kick, there's the rolling of the hips and the leverage that comes with that, and there's also drag. So we're not talking about drag or hip roll or kick, efficiency or effectiveness. It's purely about the paddle, and the paddle actually goes from the elbow to the fingertips. It includes the forearm, but the beauty about the forearm is it follows the hand. So that's why we measure all these things on the hand so that we can get a really good picture of the largest contributor to propulsion and to swimming speed, which is the hand.

Danielle Spurling: 4:17

Yeah, awesome. Show us how we turn them on and how we work them.

Jaimie Fuller: 4:22

Okay. So to turn them on. I should make sure I put them on the right hand on. So to turn them on. They've only got. They've only got two things on them. They've got a button and an led light. I mean it's got a little pressure sensor inside the o, but here this is the thing that we engage with. We interact with is that button, and so we hold that button down for a long press and they go green and they're now ready to record. So the idea is I start them, I'm ready to record, and now I can hop in the water and when I'm ready to start swimming, I double-click one of the handsets so that's now recording a file, so you can start swimming now, and that will that will collect the data, and then when you stop swimming, you double click one of the buttons again and then that will, it's collected data and I'm ready to download it, and then I can see exactly what that data is showing me about my hands and what they've been doing.

Danielle Spurling: 5:24

And so I can record everything in my session, even if I'm doing repeats. Say I'm doing 10 100s, I just push it to get started, then I put my hands under the water streamline, swim my 100. And as I come in I hold it down and stop it, wait for my rest and then go again. Yeah, exactly.

Jaimie Fuller: 5:45

When you say you hold it down and stop it, wait for my rest and then go again. Yeah, exactly, when you say you hold it down, you just double click to stop it. Let's just step back a bit, because ideally, what you want to do when you first get them is do a baseline and, depending on what you swim, danielle, so if you're a triathlete and your main purpose is competition where you're swimming, say, 2k legs or 1,500, 1.5k legs, what you'll want to do is your very first swim. You'll do 1.5K. Likewise, if you're a competitive pool swimmer, that your thing is the 400 or the 200, you want to capture that before you start using the system and that becomes your baseline. And that's the thing that you keep coming back to as you're tracking your progress over time, progress over time.

Jaimie Fuller: 6:49

So for me it was about 800 meters. So I did my 800 meters and then I'd train during the week and I'd play around and I'd do 50s and 100s and twos and I'd do trial and error and I'd try and get less down and more propulsive. I'd try and get that elbow up higher. I'd play with that.

Jaimie Fuller: 7:03

But then, every, every weekend, I'd do an 800 meter time trial and that way, over time, I could track my progress, not just with my time but with all of the individual metrics, including things like distance per stroke or number of strokes per lap, my percentage of of energy or force.

Jaimie Fuller: 7:24

That's propulsive, because we split it up and we show you, for example, on that baseline, we'll show you of the 100%, how much is moving back towards your feet, how much is moving laterally, how much is moving down or up at the back end of your stroke.

Jaimie Fuller: 7:43

So we give you that data and then you can look at that over time with your objective to to change and to bring as much propulsion into play as you can. We've also got an idea of your goals, of what you would want to achieve ideally, differently for a distance swimmer as for a sprinter, because the sprinter's got a straight arm, so they tend to get more downward force at the beginning, before the catch, whereas a distance swimmer has got that high elbow goes over the barrel and they tend to have less downward force and a higher percentage of propulsion. So you you can track your total force or the amount of power that you're pushing. You can track the direction it's going. You can track the number of laps, the number of strokes per lap, your distance per stroke. You can track all of these individual things and you can see your progress over time as you make those changes.

Danielle Spurling: 8:43

When you get that data and we'll have a look at that in a moment do you have any sort of touchstones for people to have a look to see what other sort of what their ideal is, or is that purely just your own sort of metrics that you're going against?

Jaimie Fuller: 9:01

So, it's a little bit of both. It's primarily just about you and the system, because swimming is such a difficult sport and we're all very individual and we've all got our own idiosyncrasies. It might be to do with flexibility. It might be to do with where we switch on which muscles at what point in the stroke and what hand path we need to take in order to maximize the power that we're trying to find and bring it against the water. So as much as people say to me oh gee, jamie, can you show me an Olympian's hand path and I'll copy that, I say no, no, no. You. You show me an Olympian's hand path and I'll copy that, I say no, no, no, you don't want to do that. This is primarily about you against you. It's not about you comparing to somebody else.

Jaimie Fuller: 9:55

So look, my force profile is sensation. My force profile is probably better than most Olympic swimmers. My times are absolute rubbish. The reason is because I have a kick that does absolutely nothing and I have horrendous body drag. So I have to make up for my terrible body position and my lack of core strength and my lack of core strength and my lack of overall swimming ability by having a much better stroke, or propulsion, if you like.

Jaimie Fuller: 10:32

So when I look at Kyle Chalmers and I was with Kyle the week before the Olympic trials when I look at the amount of force that he's pushing and where that force is being applied, it's, frankly, considerably less than I do pushing, and where that force is being applied, it's, frankly, considerably less than I do. But you know, I mean I also. I also watched him do a 50 meters with a kickboard in 32 seconds. Now, the good news for me is, when I use the kickboard, I don't go backwards. Quite a lot of things go backwards with the kickboard. The bad news is, I hardly move forward.

Jaimie Fuller: 11:05

So so there are all these other external factors that come into play, but when it comes down to me, looking at me and my data and comparing over the time and making changes and looking at the outcome of those changes, that's what this is about. So having, though, when we do look at what we call the force field, which is how we break those forces up in percentage terms, we have a pretty clear idea of what everybody should be aiming for, and it is slightly different for a sprinter to a distance swim, and so when I have my one-on-one sessions that I do with our customers who buy the stuff, buy the tech, and then they go and use it and then they want a little bit of help in interpreting it. So we set up these Zoom calls and share screen and go over it and I show them, I walk them through it.

Danielle Spurling: 12:01

Invariably I can talk to them about what their objective should be in the force field, based on whether they're a sprint or a distance with them I mean it's intriguing because obviously I used it probably six, seven weeks ago when we first spoke and the feedback you gave me then made me think a lot about what I was doing with my stroke and there was a lot of downward push and I've been thinking about unusual, yeah, which is not unusual, but a lot I thought, much more than I thought I was doing, so I've been thinking about that a little bit over this time, so it'll be interesting when we look at my data to see whether that has improved at all.

Jaimie Fuller: 12:44

Daniel, the bottom line is, if you can, because in the time I spent in the US last year going around and talking to a lot of NCAA coaches and swimmers and doing demos and looking at data, I was blown away by the amount of NCAA sw2a swimmers who were didn't have much in the in the wave propulsion and they had way too much downward force.

Jaimie Fuller: 13:13

A lot of them more than half of their total energy expenditure is the hand pushing down and there are a bunch of reasons why this can happen and some of it is as simple as you know. When you we know from a from a middle distance or a distance swimmer, we know that you want to get that high elbow catch and go over the barrel. I mean it's it's pretty basic, but you'd be amazed at the amount of these guys where their first move is actually a drop of the elbow and the moment that elbow drops that hand and the moment that elbow drops, that hand has got to push down further and that in itself is a massive contributor to having too much downward force. Instead of that elbow kicking, you know, at the end of the glide and kicking to get that catch, it goes the other way and the ramifications of that are severe.

Danielle Spurling: 14:03

Yeah, the other way and the, the ramifications of that is severe. Yeah, and I think actually, looking at um sort of older athletes so sort of like master swimmers, I think a little bit of that is also shoulder flexibility, so that sort of comes into it as well, because when you're getting that early I know I'm disappearing in here um early vertical forearm, it actually decreases the space in the shoulder capsule, so it is a lot harder for inflexible older athletes to actually get into that sort of position. So I think this kind of data is really, you know, great to have, because they know that then maybe they need to work a little bit on that shoulder flexibility and getting into the right position so they're not hurting their shoulder, no question.

Jaimie Fuller: 14:42

So they're not hurting their shoulder, no question. And it reveals all this stuff and it stresses, and you'd be amazed at the gap that exists between what my brain thinks I'm doing and what I'm really doing. It's terrifying. I had a guy in Bergen in Norway tell me oh, look our hand, path's no good because it says. He said to me, it says that my hand is going into the glide across my body like this. And I know, he said, I know I'm gliding straight. And he went and invested in a GoPro camera with a little cradle and a suction cup that he stuck against the end of the lane and swam towards it. And he contacted me, absolutely horrified because when he saw himself on video, the hands, the hands were coming into glass and in his mind he was absolutely certain that it was straight. And this happens quite a lot, with a brain saying one thing but the the body's doing.

Danielle Spurling: 15:43

Yeah, it's very interesting, isn't it Very interesting? I'll share my screen with you and we can have a bit of a look at what we'd like to look at. First, the force field.

Jaimie Fuller: 15:55

Well, first of all, pick your swim. Is this the swim you want to focus on?

Danielle Spurling: 15:58

Yeah, I mean I just did a number of. Now this was in a 25 metre pool. Yeah, they're all pretty much the same. Let's just look at this one. That's fine, I tell you what. Go to the one below because it's a faster time.

Jaimie Fuller: 16:12

It's 41 seconds.

Danielle Spurling: 16:13

I think I was doing 25 fast, 25 easy, so it'd be interesting to see the difference.

Jaimie Fuller: 16:21

Okay.

Jaimie Fuller: 16:22

So what you're looking at here is the summary. It's a summary at the top and it tells you where the pool is, what the distance you swam, the pool length, the time it took, total number of strokes, your average stroke rate, your distance per stroke and your force per stroke. So that's just a swim summary. And then you're looking at the two laps down the bottom. The orange is your left hand, the blue is your right. So you can see you've actually got a dominant left hand, you're pushing more force through your left and then the green line on top that's your stroke rate. And if you hover your pointer above the green line on top, that's your stroke rate. And if you hover your pointer above the green line, see, your stroke rate on lap two was 36. Then you go to lap one, move a bit further over and you were stroke rate of 40. So, as you said, you were sort of pushed more on lap one and then you slowed down on lap two. So that's total force. Now if you click on force field on the tab force field, this is where we get to see where those forces are being applied. And so we're looking at lap one.

Jaimie Fuller: 17:31

We've got both hands switched on and you can see that you're only getting a third of your energy as propulsive. You're only getting a third of your energy is propulsive. More than half of it is pushing down and the rest is split, primarily laterally. You've got more force pushing to the right direction than you do to the left, so you're 8.3 in the right direction and 4.7 in the left. I would hazard a guess that that is your left hand, so that's for both hands combined. If you go and switch off the right hand down the bottom, please, on the left, if you switch, that little yep and you'll see there. Yeah, see, the left hand is pushing to the right 14%. Your propulsion remains the same and your downward remains the same. So both hands are consistent propulsively and downward, but you've got a slight imbalance laterally.

Jaimie Fuller: 18:29

So let's have a look at your consistency and see what your consistency can tell us. So we might as well turn it on all left and all right, please. Okay, so you can see. In fact, could you switch off the right please, and we'll just look at the left. What you can see here is you've got several strokes that are coming right across your centre line and I would hazard a guess that you breathe to the right. Daniel, yes, correct, okay, and I think you might find that those strokes that are crossing over further, I think you might find those could be your breathing strokes. So if you clear all selected, please Right, and now click two, four and six. Right now, sorry, unclick two and I'm trying to look for a pattern to see. And eight, click eight, please.

Jaimie Fuller: 19:30

I think you'll find that your breathing strokes are four, six and eight. I don't know what happened to two, but that's telling us that you've got a distinct difference in your breathing strokes to your non-breathing strokes, which is happening because your head rotation is not as optimal as it could be and it should be. We know that the best swimmers, when they breathe, you just see the corner of their mouth stick out of the water. Their objective is to minimize the head rotation because we don't want to affect the shoulders or the body balance at all, so that head rotation wanted to be independent of everything else. And if you've got that, then you won't have what we're looking at here, which is that significant difference for that left hand during the breathing phase. And what I tell people, if they're unsure, is put a snorkel on, take the head rotation out, put a snorkel on, take the readings and you should see those hand paths balance each other out.

Danielle Spurling: 20:38

No, I agree, I know that they're different and I know that. Yes, because of flexibility, I think I'm definitely crossing over when I breathe to balance out the stroke.

Jaimie Fuller: 20:52

That's why I always swim with a snorkel. I have flexibility issues too, in my neck, and I basically wreck my body if I try and breathe. So for me, I'm never going to compete, I'm never going to be racing anybody, I just do it for me. So snorkel on all the time, and it means I can swim distances that ordinarily I couldn't.

Danielle Spurling: 21:16

The other thing I look at is symmetry.

Jaimie Fuller: 21:18

So if you wouldn't mind selecting all of the left and the right, please? And what we're looking for here is ideally a mirror, particularly in the overhead. So we look at the side on view and we want to see ideally both of them coming down to the same depth. We're looking for that balance and particularly in the middle, for the overhead view, we're looking to see the hand paths mirror one another.

Jaimie Fuller: 21:46

It's not unusual to see somebody with one hand path doing this and the other doing that. You know it's and it highlights things that you should focus on and potential injuries. You know, quite often you'll have somebody that's had shoulder surgery and getting back to we're talking before about flexibility, you know they've got a problem with one particular shoulder and they can't get that range of motion Either way. It makes you ask the question and it might be down to seeing a physical therapist or a physio and getting worked on, and they might discover that you've got some sort of blockage, something that's stopping you from having the range of motion that you not only need for swimming but you need for good general health, and then you can identify those problems and start working on them, should we?

Jaimie Fuller: 22:36

have a look at lap two, please, Danielle, if you click down the bottom on two and then select the strokes again, yeah, it's a pretty much the same sort of pattern you can really see on the right hand side, the head on. You can see the width and how that left hand is cutting right across your center line. You can see how it really stands out on that head where it's coming down in a loop and then going back.

Danielle Spurling: 23:06

Yeah, really, it's coming over a long way, isn't it?

Jaimie Fuller: 23:10

Let's have a look at force versus time, because this is where it gets really interesting, in that we can now look inside the stroke, and so this looks a little bit intimidating at first, and I'll tell you what we're going to do. Can you turn off the right hand, please? I'm going to ask you are you able just to select in the middle, say the middle, four strokes, if you click on one and then hold it down? And then, yeah, just click on that and hold it down and then move it over? Yep, keep going, going a bit further. There you go, and you can let that go.

Jaimie Fuller: 23:44

Right now, what we're looking at is we've blown them up and each of those spikes is a stroke. So you can see we're looking at four strokes there, and what's important on here is to be able to read the three phases of glide, pull and recovery. And so if we take the one on the left and to the right of the one on the left where it goes flat, this one here Exactly, and just come back a bit further back, a bit further right there, that's where the hand is exiting the water, and then the hand is in recovery and whilst it's in recovery, it's out of the water. It's not measuring any force, which is why that's flat line on the zero. And if you can move to the right, please right to there. And right there is where the hand is now entering the glide.

Jaimie Fuller: 24:39

And you can see how it goes negative during the glide, and that negative force indicates hand drag. And we don't want, during the glide phase, we don't want to be presenting the palm of the hand to the water in front of us, because that's effectively applying a break. And that's what you see there on each of those strokes, and some of them worse than others. So the one before you can see is the worst, that's bad.

Jaimie Fuller: 25:06

Yep, you've got a lot of hand drag there, whereas the one, uh, sort of second from the right is the best one. Where you've got that one. There you don't have that much, but that's indicating. So your hand, as it's going into the glide, is doing that. Now it can be because the wrist is dropping or the elbow is dropping, but either way, a good glide is constantly heading downward at a slight angle and you shouldn't be doing that at all in your glide, because if you don't do that, it actually becomes slightly propulsive as opposed to putting on a brake, and at the end of the glide you can see. And if you go just to the right of where you were there, oh, yes, here.

Jaimie Fuller: 25:51

Yeah, that one there. And you can see we start to pull and you can see the propulsion increases and it goes up and then something happens and it drops off, drops off again, and then it goes up and then something happens and it drops off again and then it goes up again.

Jaimie Fuller: 26:04

And so the question is why am I losing that propulsion? What am I doing that's getting me propulsive? And then suddenly I'm losing the propulsion and then it's coming back, and it's not as simple as I'm. I'm starting my pool, I get to a point and I stop and have a holiday, and then I go again. It's not quite as simple, and I'll show you how we can diagnose this.

Danielle Spurling: 26:30

We'll be back with Jamie after this short break. Did you know that you can now subscribe to the show by becoming a supporter of the show? It really helps us continue to put out our weekly content, which is free to all who listen. You can become a subscriber through following the link in our Instagram bio at Torpedo Swim Talk podcast or via the button on our Torpedo Swim Talk website. The subscription gives you extra content and as part of that subscription, you'll get advanced notifications that a new episode is dropped. You'll receive four swim training workouts a month. You become a member of our private WhatsApp group and you'll get a shout out on the show. And now back to Jamie.

Jaimie Fuller: 27:15

And I'll show you how we can diagnose this. And I'll show you how we can diagnose this. So the beauty about this little baby here. If you click on the word lateral down at the bottom, please, what? This then does? Is this, then, shows us the two vectors we're looking at the propulsive and lateral force? Can you please select those four strokes that we were looking at Now?

Jaimie Fuller: 27:40

to tell you how we read this, you see the propulsive. We talked about the propulsive waveform. How simple it is to read that when we look at the lateral, the lateral forces are either going to be positive or negative. When the lateral forces are positive, it means that the hands are facing outwards. When the lateral forces are negative, the hands are facing inwards. So you can effectively picture in your mind's eye and if you take that first stroke on the left and you can see we've already talked about the hand drag, I've used my left hand, we've talked about the hand drag at the same time it's positive.

Jaimie Fuller: 28:23

So not only have you got hand drag, but that hand is is aimed outwards during your glide, right because it's positive. And then if you scroll across a little further, right there, no, back a bit, because what you're seeing is that hand changes direction and so it starts off in the glide facing outwards as it starts to pull, it rotates and that's where you're getting negative down the bottom. See where that is, right there, if you just push the pointer down, just so we can get rid of those things right. And then if you go over a little bit further to the right right there, right you see it's got a change of direction, of lateral. Can you come back just a whisker, just to the point? We're on that change right there, and that change of direction coincides with you bottoming out your propulsion. What that means is your hand is rotating as it's coming through the stroke and what we want, is we want that hand facing the feet all the way back.

Jaimie Fuller: 29:27

But what you're doing is you're going out and you're rolling and you're coming in and then you're getting your second push. Your push gives you your second peak. And if you go over two strokes and have a look at the one in the middle right there, you see it looks a little bit like a mirror between the propulsive and the lateral and it shows you that relationship that exists between a change in lateral force direction and your force, either dropping off the cliff propulsive dropping off the cliff or your propulsion bottoming out and then going back up.

Danielle Spurling: 30:02

Right, yeah, it's really really interesting.

Jaimie Fuller: 30:06

Okay Now can you go to the next chart, which is stroke path and force. Now can you click on stroke six, please, down the bottom, yep, and click on the lateral on the right a bit further to the right, and click on the lateral on the right a bit further to the right and then on top of the stroke path, the hand path. So it's got side on overhead and head on. Click on overhead, please. So now what we're doing is we're bringing this all together where we're going to see the hand path, we're going to see the force that play in the direction, both propulsively and laterally.

Jaimie Fuller: 30:42

Now on the left-hand side where it says time, there's a slider and if you grab that red dot at the top of the time, if you click on that and hold it down and then start sliding that down, you can see on the hand path.

Jaimie Fuller: 30:57

that hand is moving where it is on the hand path, that hand is moving where it is on the hand path and we can see right what's going on here and where those forces are changing. So if we come back up, please, and what I want to do is select, I want to get to, I want to slide that slider down until that red line on the right coincides with the first peak.

Danielle Spurling: 31:21

Oh, that next one up.

Jaimie Fuller: 31:22

Okay On that hand path is where your propulsive force is about to go through the floor and you can see on that force chart it not only drops, it goes to zero. So in the middle of that stroke stroke you have no propulsion at all. So and at that stage where your hand is there on that hand path, in the middle, you're generating inward force. So that hand is moving inwards, right and as it's moving inwards and it's facing inwards, see that hand can move inwards and still face the back, or it can move inwards and face inwards and and it's it's facing inwards, which means it's generating that lateral force. So if you grab that slider again, please, daniel, and move it a bit further to the bottom of the valley of the propulsion, a bit further right there.

Jaimie Fuller: 32:22

Ok, now, right there, if you look on the hand path is the extreme point on the right of your hand path and now your hand path. And if you look at your lateral force, see the way your lateral force it goes up and then comes back down where we're on that peak of lateral. That's a change in direction. Hand is doing that at that point which marries up with the hand rotation, and then that point where you're at there on the hand path is effectively where pull becomes push and that push gives you the second.

Danielle Spurling: 33:05

Luckily the push is a little bit stronger, because otherwise I'd be in trouble.

Jaimie Fuller: 33:11

No, no, the push is good, but what your goal should be is to get rid of that repulsive goal Exactly.

Danielle Spurling: 33:19

I know exactly what's happening there. I turn in the old way we were taught under the body, and what I'm doing is I'm moving the hand too far.

Jaimie Fuller: 33:30

And look, the beauty about this system is very small changes in the hand angle show up really clearly because the impact is significant. You'd be amazed at this. Really small change can have a devastating effect on your propulsion. It really does. It's about, and it's about once again, newton's third law. If I want to go that way, my hand's got to be moving that way. And if you think about it right, if you imagine maximum force, pushing maximum force through, at a certain point, your muscles can't cope, your body can't cope and something has to give. And what gives is that hand just rotates.

Jaimie Fuller: 34:19

Because if I move my hand like that, or if I move it, it's so much easier to move like that, I'm reducing the surface area, or even going halfway reduces the surface area. You slip, you lose water and that's exactly what that is. It's telling you that you're slipping. Now mostly it's about being aware of it, concentrating, doing it and doing it again and having a look at the data and having a look at the output like this, and you'll see it improve and change. That's mostly what it's about. Sometimes with some people it's about getting into the gym and doing dry land work and building up their muscles so that they can contain that, but it shouldn't be. It should be more about I mean, I'm talking for us non-elites, right, it should be more about an awareness thing.

Jaimie Fuller: 35:15

And the other thing I've got to tell you, daniel, the thing that really makes this system sink is when you take this and you put it at the end of the lane of the pool.

Jaimie Fuller: 35:26

You get in and you do two laps and you stand in the shallow end and whilst you're in the water you download it and you're looking at the force field and the force field tells you you're 33% propulsive and you think, okay, I'm now going to go again and I'm going to concentrate, because I'm 51% down and 33% propulsive. I'm going to concentrate on transitioning and going from the end of the glide into that position very quickly, because that's my downward force and I want to be done quickly, efficiently and effectively. So then I've got more repulsive time and so you go and do another two laps and you concentrate on that, and then you stand in the pool and you download it again. It takes five seconds and you've got the data and you think, okay, I've gone from 33, 33 propulsion, 51 down. Suddenly you're at 46 percent propulsive and 42 percent down. I'm going to go again and again and again, and you'd be amazed at how quickly you can get from 33% to 60% plus per post.

Danielle Spurling: 36:33

Yeah.

Jaimie Fuller: 36:34

By concentrating on that. It's what we call the fast feedback loop. Yeah, it's that. As opposed to go and get the data, go home, load it, look at it and then think, okay, tomorrow I'm going to go back and I'm going to do this, which still works, and frankly, it's the way I did it and I've dramatically changed my strength by doing it. I'd stop in a coffee shop on the way home and I'd have a look at my data. I'd have a coffee, look at my data, and then I'd go and I'd implement the change the next day.

Jaimie Fuller: 37:09

It just sort of takes longer, whereas if you can do this with that fast feedback loop, get it to where you want to get to. And then it's about rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. You end up with your you know your muscle memory kicks in, you ingrain it into your muscle memory and then you go and look at the next. And that's the other thing. So many people think they can change multiple things at once. No way. One thing, focus on one thing, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it and then move on to the next yeah, look, I think that having that biofeedback with the phone at the end of the pool is really good.

Danielle Spurling: 37:41

I didn't do that either. Um, I, I did it all and then I. Some of these may have been backstroke, I think they were. Some of them were backstroke, but I don't know which ones, because then I couldn't remember. So I think.

Jaimie Fuller: 37:54

Well, you'll see backstroke if you look at the consistency on any of them. The backstroke charts are very, very clearly backstroke. And what?

Jaimie Fuller: 38:03

you should do is when you upload the data to your phone, you select the stroke so you can do back butterfly and free. We can't do breaststroke yet That'll come later this year but if you want to do backstroke it's not a problem. And then you upload it and you tell it it's backstroke and then it'll show you all the principles still the same. Newton's third law still remains the same. It's about that hand. You know it's just in backstroke. You want that hand. What you want is you want that hand facing your feet. You don't want it like that. You don't want it like that. You don't want it coming through like that or like that. You want it. You want it as flush as you can, heading towards your feet until you get near the end.

Danielle Spurling: 38:47

And it's exactly the same principle it's an it's an amazing system and I think um I certainly already got a lot from it just just from using it. Um, when you said breaststroke will be coming later in the year, because a few people have um asked about that, when do you know when that's coming?

Jaimie Fuller: 39:09

No, I don't, and the reason is we detect at the moment it's about the stroke definition of hand entry and hand exit, and with breaststroke we know that that doesn't necessarily happen. So we've got to reconfigure all the algorithms. It can be done, there's no question. It's not a question of can it or can't it be done, it's more a function of time and what have you? Can I share my screen with you? I want to show you something. We can synchronise video and data as well. So if you want to capture video, what we do is we capture. As you can see on here, we're capturing that first flash, and that first flash becomes the point to synchronize both.

Jaimie Fuller: 40:01

So when I hit you, can see this red line moving, because that's that's recording, but it's not measuring anything because he's not in the water. But you'll see in a second right. Here is where it starts to capture data, because that's where the hands enter the water, and so you'll see in he comes. Now the beauty about this is we can blow this up and we can go into here. We can look and say, oh, look at that big double peak, what's his hand doing there? And if I click right there, see what happens to the video.

Jaimie Fuller: 40:39

it goes immediately to that spot and then, I can go frame by frame and you'll see that red line move and as the red line move and as the red line moves, so does the video.

Jaimie Fuller: 40:52

And you can see in the video we can now see the back of his hand because that hand is rotated right. That hand is no longer pointing, which is why he's dropped this propulsion there. And if you want, you can switch the left hand off. We can put the lateral on, we can blow this back up. We can look at again. If I come back here you'll see here it's now got that slight little bump there is because that hand is just slightly facing outwards on the video and then it's turning, it's going to turn here and then, as that's turning, that hand is now turning and coming in. We're now going to start to generate this lateral force inwards, as you see right, at the same time as we're losing that propulsion right. And then he comes back for a second peak right there. Now that hand is facing perfectly backwards right here as he's getting his maximum propulsion right there.

Jaimie Fuller: 41:57

And then if we want to see the left hand, well, I'll turn the right off, turn the left on, and then we'll look at lap two, because he'll be going back the other way and we might click there. And then, lo and behold, now we can see what the left hand is doing as it's coming through from the other side. So the ability to, because quite a lot of swimmers need to have visual proof as well. Right, we were talking before about the guy who thought that his hands were going straight. Well, quite a lot of people. They need to see this, and when you're showing them and you're explaining that your hand's doing this and you can see it in the data and show what's happening, when they see it on the video and they can see. Suddenly, now, from the side, we can see the back of the hand, so it's not rotated fully, but it's at an angle.

Danielle Spurling: 42:52

then they get it so you just set up a um a gopro to video this this one was a gopro.

Jaimie Fuller: 43:00

You can use a mobile phone anything as long as you can get a file. It's as simple as that. And then you, and then you download the file from your device to your computer and then through the platform because you don't do the video on the app, you do it on the platform and then, through the platform, you upload it to the platform, from your computer to the platform. You do the very simple synchronizing, which is very simple. Like I said, it synchronizes to the flash. So if I take this back to the very beginning, right there when we hit play, you can see it's flashing and that's the synchronizing point, which then goes on there.

Danielle Spurling: 43:47

It's super easy and it's great for coaches and swimmers that want to get that extra, that extra dimension to it yeah, I mean, it's such valuable feedback and it, as you say, you don't realize that those things are happening in your stroke. So to see it on the video, I think, is for a lot of athletes are visual learners, so I think that that is really, you know, really important to go with the sports science advice as well.

Jaimie Fuller: 44:16

But the beauty about it is you can see very clearly like this right hand has got double peaks. As you can see, the left hand tends not to have the double peaks. That first peak is very small. It's a very different pattern. You can see very have the double peaks, what it does. That first peak is very small. It's a very different pattern. You can see very clearly that double peak and so if you just had the video, you're not going to see that no, exactly.

Danielle Spurling: 44:37

You need both parts to fit together like a jigsaw. Yeah.

Jaimie Fuller: 44:40

You're not going to understand, but that's why, also, you can appreciate. That's why this chart here, when we were talking about this before, um, you know this, this chart here is the nearest we've got to doing a video. Without a video, yeah, to be able to look at what that hand position is here and again. Here you can see, look, that hand is going to change direction laterally there. As it's changing direction, look what happens to the propulsion right, and in this case it's the right hand yours was the left hand sweeping in. In this case it's the right hand sweeping out and it hits that point of maximum outward position here and then it rotates and as it rotates and it comes in force, drops off and then from here to here, it's getting that inward lateral force, which is what's down here and then here, as you can see, it's going to push back. From there it back, and that's where we get that second peak.

Danielle Spurling: 45:49

Fantastic data. I love it, it's cool, isn't it yeah? It's really cool. It really really is, jamie. Thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. I'm really really pleased that you came back and we got this download video so people can actually see what we were talking about. So that they can, you know.

Jaimie Fuller: 46:10

Well, let's hope your recording skills are better than the last one.

Danielle Spurling: 46:12

We're blaming the cloud.

Jaimie Fuller: 46:13

We're blaming the cloud let's hope we do have it recorded.

Danielle Spurling: 46:17

I think we will okay.

Jaimie Fuller: 46:21

Thanks, jamie, take care good on you, dan Danielle. Thank you.

Danielle Spurling: 46:24

Okay, bye, take care. Bye. Thanks for listening into today's episode. Check out the video to this podcast over on our YouTube channel. We'll put the link in today's show notes. We'll also put a link to EO Sports Lab so that, if you want to check out these handsets for yourself, you can have a look at their website and go from there. And a big shout out to Sarah Louise, john Travers, jeff Miller and Abby Conrad, who all became our very first subscribers this last week. Your support means the world. If you want to join them, don't forget to subscribe to the show through following the link in our Instagram bio at Torpedo Swim Talk podcast or via the button on our Torpedo Swim Talk website. Hope to see you in our Swim Talkers group soon. Till next time. Happy swimming and bye for now.