The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 348 - Six Strokes

Transcript:

Pete: Hello there, Jennifer.

Jen: Hello there, Peter.

Pete: So long-time listeners of our show will know that once a year, every summer, Jen Waldman comes up with an aha moment, an idea, an episode for our podcast based on her running journey.

Jen: It's true. Coming up soon, listeners.

Pete: Which, is just a couple months away. Start...you know, strap yourself in, everyone. Get excited. And so, this is not an annual tradition of mine, but I had a recent aha moment, a recent thought, a recent nugget of wisdom that I received from a swimming coach that I've been working with. And I thought I'd share it with you, and see if there's some wisdom here beyond just being in the pool.

Jen: Splish, splash. Let's go. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: "Splish, splash, I was taking a bath." I went straight to, "Splish, splash, I was taking a bath."

Jen: Yeah, me too. And then, I realized that's a bathtub, not an ocean. But, I digress.

Pete: It's a bathtub. Which, Ollie is swimming laps of his bathtub at the moment, so it's relevant.

Jen: Are you swimming in the ocean or are you swimming in a pool?

Pete: Right now, I'm swimming in the pool because I live in Brisbane and the ocean is like an hour or so away. It's a whole different thing. A little bit annoying, I'm not bitter about it. But we're swimming in the pool. We're swimming in the pool.

Jen: Okay.

Pete: So, I've been doing these...I mean, I feel like I need to explain the origin story real quick, first and foremost, because it's relevant to our podcast. A few years ago, I met, virtually, was introduced to, perhaps through a workshop that we ran, an incredible woman by the name of Shannon, who ended up listening to our podcast and becoming an avid listener off the back of attending one of our workshops. And she is a marathon swimmer. She is a swim coach. She is an extraordinary human, based in the States. At some point along the journey...we'd exchanged Instagram DMs a few times. And at some point along the journey, she caught on to the fact that I was in Brisbane, and that her swimming coach was also in Brisbane, someone by the name of Tracey. And she said, "If you're still swimming, I think you should go and do a lesson with Tracey. She's amazing. She's the best of the best. You've got to go and experience getting coached by Tracey. It's a whole thing." And I was like, "Alright." So admittedly, this took me a couple of years longer than it should have to action her advice. But I recently actioned her advice, and I've been having these one-on-one coaching sessions with this incredible swim coach, Tracey, who provides these little prompts, these little nuggets, these little ways to change one's technique in swimming that just have so much. I feel like there's so much application beyond the pool. So, that's the context.

Jen: Love it.

Pete: Okay. Let me see. I mean, I have so many, but I'm going to try and distill into the essence of what I want to say. Firstly, the main crux of what I want to get across, the aha moment I had was, in the past, if I was training to swim...I feel like this is going to, it feels obvious already and I haven't even said it. I feel like you're going to be like, "Obviously, Pete." But it was an aha moment for me. In the past, if I said I was going to go to swim, I was going to go to the pool, I was going to do a swimming session, I would expect myself to swim for, I don't know, thirty to sixty minutes probably, and accumulate around about two kilometers, which is just over a mile, and come out of the pool huffing and puffing and feeling quite satisfied that I did a workout. You know, like the huff and the puff of it all is like the point.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And in the sessions that I do with Tracey, and what she encourages me to do on my own, is literally the polar opposite. It is like, you swim six strokes at a time without breathing, focusing on one very, very, very specific cue. And then, you stop. You get some feedback. You watch a video, because she's videoing the whole thing. And then, you get another cue and you do the same thing for six strokes, which takes around about, I don't know, ten seconds.

Jen: Wow.

Pete: And so, there's so much more to say about all this, but I feel like that's the essence of the nugget of wisdom. Beyond just the pool, I feel like I have this tendency to think that things need to be effortful and hard in order to be effective. And in absence of huffing and puffing, I could easily convince myself that I'm not doing enough or I'm not working hard enough or I'm not doing the thing properly, not just in the pool.

Jen: Oh, wow. This is really hitting home and really, really resonating. Pete, I'm not a swimmer other than for bouncing around in waves in the ocean and catching my nieces as they jump into the pool. So, that's the extent of my swimming. But I imagine that this can be equated to things in my world. One of the reasons, beyond the fact that swimming a mile at a time is hard, but one of the reasons you may be huffing and puffing to such an extent is because you had not focused in on the technique. That focusing in on the technique would allow that to be slightly easier or less depleting. Now, I do not want to take away from the difficulty of swimming a mile, but it's interesting to think about the outsized impact that a focus on six strokes with proper technique could have on a mile-long swim.

Pete: Right. I mean, I have said to her, "I'm doing a triathlon in November, and it's a mile swim. And at some point, I'm going to have to ramp up my Ks in the pool, right? Like, what are we doing?" And she goes, "Don't worry about that. You've got plenty of time for that. You need to dial in your stroke, so that it is as efficient and effortless as possible." And this whole idea of, especially in swimming, but this applies to running and all sorts of sports and not just sport, is, if you can get your technique so dialed in, the effort required to complete the task is so much less. So yeah, you could go and swim two kilometers, and huff and puff. But also, maybe you could eventually swim two kilometers, and not huff and puff, because you're so efficient and smooth in the way that you're swimming. I was thinking actually that this philosophy of teaching feels like it fits with how you coach and teach actors in your studio. Firstly, providing really specific, sometimes like quirky and random cues that you think, "Well, how could this possibly impact my swim?" Like, literally one of the cues the other day that I got was, "I want you to focus on the bottom of your scapula and your fingernail. They're the only two things. So think about moving your bottom of your scapula and reaching with your fingernail. That's it." And you go, "But what about all of the other things that I have to do when I'm swimming?" "I don't give a shit about those. I don't care about those. Just focus on those two things." And invariably, if you just focus on those two things, a whole lot of other stuff happens as a result that you're not conscious of.

Jen: Right.

Pete: So, it feels very Jen Waldman. It's like, what's the essence of the thing that you need, the nudge you need, the cue you need, the prompt you need, the framework you need? And how can you just focus in on that for a very short period of time? Which will enable everything else to become a little easier, a little more effortless

Jen: Oh my gosh. I'm so obsessed with this. It's so good. This is reminding me of something I say to my clients all the time about why we tape their sessions in class. And I equate it to...again, I'm not up on my swimming. But I use a swimming reference because everybody knows who Michael Phelps is, so I equate it to Michael Phelps. That, Michael Phelps does not win all of those gold medals without nitpicking minutiae. Because you're talking about winning by one one-hundredth of one second.

Pete: Yeah, that's wild.

Jen: And when you're operating at a level of excellence like that, it is the minutiae that makes the difference and separates you. So I love the idea that you're thinking about, where you're placing your fingernail, and that kind of attention to detail makes everything else better. Similarly, when I ask the actors I'm working with to watch their tapes back, I will say to them, "You know, it's not to decide whether or not you're worthy of love. It is to actually get into the technical elements of it all. What am I doing with my breath? What am I doing with my feet? How much tension is in my jaw? You know, things that ultimately do make a really, really big difference. But it's just one little thing you're focusing on."

Pete: Right. And I feel like I've heard you say some version of this...I'll paraphrase it. I'll butcher it, I'm sure. But it's this idea of like, without technique or without skill, we have nothing. Is that a Jen Waldman-ism?

Jen: Yes, it is.

Pete: Right. Can you say more about that? Because I think it's just so relevant to this.

Jen: Well, Pete, there's a difference between actually completing a triathlon and signing up for one. Right? So, you might have the motivation. You might have the drive. You might have the will. You might have a cheerleading squad. And you might have people who have shirts on it that say "Pete's First Triathlon". But unless you actually have the technique and the skill, you will not cross the finish line. Period.

Pete: Right.

Jen: You've got to have the chops to back up the desire.

Pete: Yeah. Now, I have been driving around, walking around, swimming around, running around, thinking about (I'm just moving my body around) all the ways this applies in life and work.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I keep coming back to this idea that it's so easy. And god, I mean, you hear it. It's almost become like a...I think "hustle porn" is an expression that people use of, "You've just got to out-hustle and out-work and grind and just work twelve, fourteen, sixteen-hour days, and just do so much more work than every other human on the planet. And that's how you get things done." And I feel like that's the equivalent of me huffing and puffing in the pool for two kilometers, thinking that's helping me become a better swimmer. But actually, what Tracey, the coach (by the way, not Tracey, my wife), has helped point out to me is maybe those people so obsessed with hustling and grinding and obsessing about fourteen-hour days haven't got their technique in check enough to be able to get the same output from six hours or five hours or four hours. Maybe grinding is a version of, "I don't have skill or technique," in the same way that I didn't have skill and technique. I had some, but not enough to be able to swim effectively. Is that the equivalent? I don't know.

Jen: This brings us back to the old favorite, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Which, one of the habits (I think it is the final one, the seventh) is "sharpen the saw".

Pete: Right. Yeah.

Jen: That, if you want to saw a piece of wood, you could take your dull saw, and spend hours and hours and hours splitting a single log. But if you just sharpen the saw, you might slice through it like butter.

Pete: Right. Now, we're talking. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's an Abraham Lincoln quote. You can't believe everything that you see on the internet, but I think Abraham Lincoln said something like, "If I was given three hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first two sharpening the axe."

Jen: Yep, I think that's right.

Pete: The axe, the saw, whatever tool that he had at his disposal. And I think that's what we're describing here. It's like, sharpening your tool, focusing on your technique, working on moving your fingernail, or whatever that metaphorical equivalent is of that, so that when it comes to the task at hand, it becomes so much easier.

Jen: Oh my gosh.

Pete: And that's a good thing. I think part of the tension I experience on a day-to-day in a work context, not to make too much of a therapy session, I constantly get tripped up by the fact that things that feel easy maybe mean that I didn't do them well enough or hard enough or effectively enough. I'll run a workshop and be like, "God, that was so fun and kind of felt easy. Did I do a good job? I don't know. Shouldn't it feel hard and effortful and like I really worked?" But no. Then, I remind myself of this whole idea, this metaphor, this expression of this mental model of thinking, is, if we've got the technique so dialed in and honed and practiced and well-established, things can and should and will feel fun and effortless and enjoyable and almost meditative in a way.

Jen: Well, Pete, I'm having a little aha moment over here that I'd like to share with you.

Pete: I mean, imagine if you just said, "Having a little aha moment over here...next thought. I'm going to keep it to myself."

Jen: That's so funny. That, you would not have come to any of these realizations about how to improve your form without outside eyes on what you were doing. And I'm equating this right now to, I will sometimes have clients send me two takes of an audition self-tape, and they'll say, "Hey, could you give me some feedback on this," or like, "Let me know which one to pick." And sometimes, I shock them by saying, "I can tell that you didn't have anyone in the room while you were working."

Pete: Wow.

Jen: And they're like, "Huh? You're right." And I'm like, "I know, because you sent me two takes that are basically identical. And if someone was in the room, these two tapes would be different from each other. You would have bigger adjustments to make, because someone would be helping you see what you're doing."

Pete: "Because they would have given you feedback." Interesting. So it would be like, "Okay, you did the first one. Cool. Now, try focusing on this instead or emphasizing this part of it instead. And so, it would be not vastly different, but it would be noticeably different."

Jen: Noticeably different. Yes. And in some cases, vastly different. Depends. Depends on the moment. But it's making me realize the importance of a (I'm putting a lowercase c) coach. It may not be someone who makes their living as a coach. But someone who has insight and expertise to help you get better at the thing you're trying to get better at seems kind of important.

Pete: Oh, totally. Yeah.

Jen: And I guess the other thing is that we're all seeking rewards in some way. And it may be unconsciously seeking reward, but part of the grind and the sweat and the hustle and the huff and the puff is giving yourself some sort of reward for having worked hard. And in the case of doing six strokes at a time, the reward is actually getting better. But it seems like we're seeking something that tells us that we've done something.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, in the swimming context, without the external coaching and feedback and videos, I don't know what my stroke looks like because I can't see it. So, I take the fact that I felt huffy and puffy as a sign that I did something worth doing.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Rather than perhaps the harder to measure on your own metric of improvement, that is how the stroke actually looked while you were doing it.

Jen: Yeah. This reminds me of one of my coaches at the gym, Raj, who I just love so much.

Pete: Is this a Gorgeous Pythons reference again?

Jen: Yes. So, I lift weights with Raj. And the other week, I said something to him like, "Maybe I need to change up my schedule." And he was like, "Why?" I said, "Well, I feel like I need to reorder how I'm doing these days, so that I sweat more." And he's like, "Are you lifting more weight this week than you were lifting last week?" And I was like, "Yes." And he goes, "Then, what you're doing is working."

Pete: Right.

Jen: It's like, "Oh, right." I was also seeking the like, "I need to be glistening when I leave here to prove to the world that I had a good workout."

Pete: Yeah. "I need to crawl to the shower because I cannot physically get myself off the ground." What is that? Ah, humans. We're so quirky and fascinating, aren't we?

Jen: We are. We are quirky. So the thing I'm taking away from this, Pete, is to potentially examine the areas where I, or you, listener, have put yourself in a position to swim an entire proverbial mile, when six strokes would have gotten you closer to the outcome you're actually looking for.

Pete: And that is a mic drop, and also, The Long and The Short Of It.