The Effortless Swimming Podcast · Brenton Ford

#391 : The Latest Swimming Analysis Tools Are Getting Wild with Jaimie Fuller

·54 min·3 clips
Triathletes can now see swim power in watts, the same language as cycling and running.
Brenton Ford frames the conversation around a familiar swim problem: too much guesswork, not enough proof. Jamie Fuller returns to talk about EO Labs and the Swim Better handsets. The system can separate downward force, lateral force, and hand drag or upward force at the back end. That matters because the point is to change one thing at a time and then measure what happened. The episode opens with the kind of headline use case that gets attention: Paige Madden's huge 800-meter improvement and the broader question of how elite swimmers get faster. From there, the talk shifts into triathletes measuring swim power in watts and syncing that data with TrainingPeaks. Fuller walks through how the software reads each hand independently instead of flattening the stroke into one blur. It can show the path each hand takes through the water on every stroke in a lap. He uses that view to compare consistency and symmetry between the left and right hands. A small S in one path, or a little extra depth on one side, stops being a hunch and becomes visible. The power-versus-time chart is the next layer. That view shows how much propulsive power each stroke is producing as the swimmer moves through the lap. Fuller then adds vertical force on top of propulsion so the phasing is easier to see. The target is to move through the downward phase early, then stay propulsive for as long as possible. He contrasts that with the version you do not want, where maximum downward force lands on top of maximum propulsion. That timing problem is the core lesson of the conversation. A swimmer can look strong and still be out of phase. The episode also briefly touches breaststroke, which Fuller treats as a different animal altogether. Near the end he points listeners to EO's support email and to virtual data reviews, which keeps the whole thing tied to coaching reality. What comes through is a straightforward way to use technology to spot a problem, test a fix, and see whether the data agrees.

As heard by us

Swim tech that matters most when it points to one clear adjustment.

This episode looks at how swim data becomes useful once it isolates one change and measures what follows. Brenton Ford speaks with Jamie Fuller of EO Labs about the Swim Better handsets, Paige Madden's 19-second improvement in the 800-meter, and the use of swim power in watts,…

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If you want swim data that shows where your speed is leaking.

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