This has led me to believe that its teaching concepts in the area of form training can be applied to any other physical activity, especially in the case of cycling and running for me. In thinking about this, I thought I could encapsulate it in the 4 S's of form training:
1. SYSTEM: You must have a system for identifying problems, removing bad habits and imprinting new and correct habits. With TI, they've done all that for you. Running has some great methods now (ie. ChiRunning, Pose Method) that strive to break down running so that you can focus on parts of your form. I have not found that to be true yet of cycling and would love to be pointed to some that discuss cycling form.
Without a system, you will inevitably try to do too much at once and see little or no improvement as old habits remain ingrained, and you can't imprint new correct ones. It also means that you are hampering your brain/body's ability to imprint new habits; someone once told me that you have to do something about 45 days or so to imprint a new habit. This means that you have to perform the new habit in the new way that many times exactly!
2. SENSITIVITY: You need to develop and have a sensitivity to what you're doing wrong and also what you're doing right. When habits become ingrained, they become commonplace and we don't even notice when we're doing something. This is both good and bad. Correct habits ingrained means we're unconsciously performing optimally and not exerting excess energy and brain power to maintain activity. But if we've ingrained a bad habit, we may actually not know we're doing something wrong because we've been doing it that way for so long. So we need to develop the body awareness to know how are bodies are moving both when we're moving slow and especially when we're moving fast. Slow is much easier, but when we're cycling our arms and legs fast this may become too much to easily discern how and where are body parts are moving. Once we can know when we're doing something wrong, then we can take steps to fix that.
3. SUSTAINABILITY: Once we ingrain new habits, we must be able to sustain them over the course of training and during the long hours of a race. Thus, we must be constantly wary of falling into old bad habits especially when we get tired and/or we lose our mental focus. Training only good habits and extending them over time will ingrain good form that is sustainable over a long time, ensuring an efficient race (and probably also injury free).
4. SYMMETRY: One thing that gets sometimes overlooked is the importance of symmetry of habits on each side of your body. We humans are built with two halves, both mirror images of each other. But unfortunately, we often perform the same activity differently on each side of our body due to old habits, favoring our strong side, muscle inbalances, etc. So while our form may be great on one side, we may find that the other side is challenged. Therefore, training to make sure that we even out both sides to equal form is important or else bad form on one side can actually affect performance on the other side.
Going back to the first S which is SYSTEM, it may be hard to find a system for your activity. TI does a great job for swimming and there are some running ones, but for cycling it may be hard. But finding a great SYSTEM will enable SUSTAINABILITY and SYMMETRY more, and help you train your brain to be more SENSITIVE.
]]>This is a relatively new seminar as most of the ones I've seen prior, including the one I took way back in 2003, were more basic. They go through the basic drills of TI which is about all you can do in a few hours, or now over two days. If you've never encountered TI drills before, you can only pretty much get to some basic level of mastery of the drills in a few hours.
I am glad to see that they are finally creating seminars which go beyond the basic drills and help us figure out what to do next after we get proficient in the drills.
The session consisted of one hour of swimming, then an hour of video examination, then another hour of swimming. First we were videotaped at the beginning, which we examined during the hour of instruction. In the first hour of swimming, Dave ran us through a whole bunch of new drills, and each time we swam we would have a different focus. This was important, as even though we were swimming freestyle each length, we would have a different aspect of the stroke to focus on and make sure we were doing exactly right.
Some of the focal points we practiced were:
1. Swing the arm on recovery using internal shoulder rotation, don't jack it up and over. (This was very interesting as it helps prevent shoulder problems by not putting your shoulder in a disadvantaged position during each stroke).
2. Kick in the shadow of your body.
3. Shoot arm forward to the outside, not crossing over.
4. As you extend, feel the stretch diagonally across your body, from your finger tip down your arm, across your chest to the opposite hip.
5. Extend forward arm as much as possible forward.
6. Use hip turn to drive arm forward.
7. As recovery arm comes up, wait, wait, wait (feel the glide), until the last moment to shoot arm forward.
8. Let the catching hand perform catch naturally in front, as recovery arm comes up and then shoots forward into the water.
9. Keep back arm in water (not swiping back the stroke) and then snap arm forward out of water into recovery.
Other things:
1. Don't be stacked at 90 degrees to water; be angled somewhat, like 60 degrees.
2. To practice the inner shoulder rotation recovery, feel as though you are scraping your bicep across the water. Swing the arm around and don't lift shoulder.
3. Forward arm needs to be deeper, not so shallow.
4. Avoid DDE (Dreaded Dropped Elbow) upon stroke back.
5. Potentially the kick can be corrected by fixing the track on which we stroke.
6. Somehow today I was able to kick a whole 25 yards in side skate position! I've never been able to do that before.
We also worked a bit with the tempo trainer. First we found our nice, comfortable tempo. Then we swam this and they videotaped us. Then we dropped .3 seconds in tempo to simulate a sprint and got videotaped this way too.
After this, Dave will send us all flash drives with our videos along with commentary on each video. I love this part: technology certainly enables great teaching and delivery of materials we can study. I can't wait to get to the pool and practice, and also looking forward to seeing what Total Immersion comes up with next.
]]>I have found that the tempo trainer is one of the best ways to introduce measurability and repeatability into swimming. It's much more detailed than just remembering how fast you can swim laps; you also gain knowledge into efficiency when you couple tempo and counting strokes per laps. Remember that you can always swim faster by just cycling your arms faster, but you want to know across workouts that you are consistently putting out a certain effort, combined with efficiency, and still keeping to a speed, or going faster/slower. It is not as good to know that you swam the same interval at given speed over two workout days, but one day you worked your butt off because your form was off but the other day you were more rested/better form and you actually had less effort.
I use the tempo trainer both for improving stroke technique and efficiency and then for endurance training.
For improving stroke technique/efficiency, I first setup baseline counts for 25y lengths from 2.6 seconds tempo all the way down to 0.8 seconds tempo. Around 1.2-1.3 seconds is considered cruising, and .8-.9 you're pretty much sprinting. In/around 2.4-2.6 seconds is almost unbearably slow. Over a period of workout days I would swim 4x25 (or 2x25) at each time and then record that down. Sometimes I would start at 2.6 and work my way down .1 seconds at a time, sometimes I would start in the middle, ie. 1.6 seconds and go to 1.2, sometimes I would start at 1.4 and go all the way down to 0.8. Sometimes I would go directly to 0.8. I usually stop when I feel I am getting too tired and losing concentration and focus.
BTW, writing it down sure beats trying to remember. Bringing paper and pen doesn't work because they fail when wet. I use a cheap plastic acrylic picture frame and a grease pencil which is better, although it can fail when there is condensation on the acrylic, but it's still much better than pen and paper.
Once you establish baselines, then you can see if you can figure out ways of beating those stroke counts. Mostly this is about firming up your technique more than anything else. Also, you will notice that at certain points you'll jump 1-2 strokes per length. These are critical points at which something is happening; maybe your technique is deteriorating, maybe you're getting tired.
BTW, if you get tired, it may be a good time to just get out of the pool because you don't want to imprint bad habits!
At some point you'll find that it's almost impossible to beat your stroke count at given tempo time. This is now your max and now you can use this to practice against from time to time to know if you're technique is suffering for some reason. However, I also think it is an interesting exercise to take some time to see if you can actually beat and maintain a lower stroke count for a given tempo time, so play with this.
For endurance, it's been about figuring how to maintain a tempo in the face of declining resources, and maintaining form at those tempos over a longer period of time and distance. So I use tempo trainer on more continuous sets, starting with 50, 100, and then longer, usually by adding 50m every week, or sometimes varying it up with more short 50m lengths, or sets of 200s, or one big 500 or 1000m set. But definitely start low distance in lengths and give yourself some rest, even upwards to 30 seconds rest. The object is to slowly increase lengths, and reps, and lower rest between reps (ie. 20 sec, down to 10 or 5 seconds rest) gradually such that you do not ruin your ability to maintain optimal swimming form by getting too tired. If you find that at a certain interval distance that you are having trouble keeping up or your form is getting messy, I would back off and practice that workout a few more times before increasing the difficulty.
Over time, you will get better and be able to go longer, with your tempo trainer keeping time along the way as a relentless timemaster.
The other thing to do is to practice different tempos with this protocol. Then you will have different speeds to engage, such as sprinting to get in front of a pack and then cutting back to cruise mode and being able to switch cleanly from all that.
A word about training on the slow end. I have found that, while almost unbearable, it has also been extremely valuable as a way to reinforce holding perfect form and practicing balance in the water. I find this translates to helping my form with faster tempos.
Hope this helps...Coach Shinji is going to run me through a "strategic use of tempo trainer" talk soon. I hope to learn more from him on how he is using the tempo trainer to help improve swimming.
]]>What's so important about measurability and repeatability?
Repeatability is the ability to come back day after day and train with a certain level of effort, intensity, etc. and ensure that you're creating the same conditions as you had the last time you trained. Measurability allows you to measure those conditions to ensure repeatability.
For example, weight training has both easy measurability and repeatability. That 30 lbs. dumbbell is still going to weigh 30 lbs. the next time you pick it up. Thus, you'll know if you are getting stronger or weaker, depending on how many reps you can curl that dumbbell.
The problem with us triathletes is that it's not so easy to have measurability and repeatability with our three sports. Of the three running is probably the most measurable and repeatable. With cycling and swimming it's not so easy.
If you don't have an accurate way to measure effort and the ability to create conditions to ensure repeatability, you won't know for sure if you're improving over time. For example, you may have increasing effort, but you may be actually performing worse if you're overtraining.
So it's important to be able to measure your training conditions and to recreate them so that you know with some level of certainty that you're improving, or how your body is performing so that you know when to back off or increase effort.
I thought I'd list my favorite training tools to maximize measurability and repeatability:
RUNNING:
Treadmill - The treadmill allows you to recreate running conditions with great accuracy, in both speed, duration, and grade. Its relentless nature doesn't allow you to fall behind; if you do, you either fly off the back of the treadmill or have to keep up. Thus, I can generally know if I'm either improving over time or not, or if I'm just a bit tired and can't repeat a workout on a particular day.
Track or measured distance running - Running a measured distance and recording the time allows you to know if you're improving over that distance and path.
CYCLING:
Power meter - Riding outside with my Powertap allows me to see what my instantaneous power is, as well as for the entire ride. I can compare that over a given path, or even just against other rides, and see how my power output compares to previous rides. With power measurement, I don't necessarily need to ride the same path; I can compare power outputs and see if I was able to increase overall power output or not.
Computrainer - The Computrainer is the best way to repeat workout conditions. After the calibration step, it will give you the same workout conditions as you had last time.
SWIMMING:
Tempo Trainer + Counting Strokes - You would think that swimming intervals was good enough for repeatability. However, swimming is a complex activity that is dependent not only on raw endurance and strength, but also on your technique. If your goal is not simply to just work harder (which I would argue it shouldn't be because you can only go so much faster by more effort and you can do much better by refining and reinforcing technique), then you need to not only measure your interval time but also how well you swam the interval. If you think about it, you can go faster by increasing your stroke rate. But if your technique gets messy, you might swim an interval at the same time as if you had swam it before with better technique but lower stroke rate. Thus, the tempo trainer ensures you are not changing your stroke rate, and counting strokes gives you a measure of how good your technique is.
With these training tools and methods, I can ensure measurability and repeatability of training conditions, giving me a nice picture of how I'm improving (or not!).
]]>I quickly skimmed through it and set it to memory, and then went out to the pool today to try to apply some what he had done and see if I could get my minimal stroke count for 25 yards down to 7 (previous best was 9).
On the first try, I hit 8! It took two more 8s before I actually glided in for 7! Unbelievable! I then managed to do a few more glide-ins to 7 and 2 actual solid 7s. I stopped when I started drifting to 8 and knew that I was getting tired.
Some notes on how I achieved the 7 strokes:
1. Everything that don h said worked great!
2. There definitely was a lot of gliding. I found that I must be able to hold my body position without a single wiggle and be perfectly balanced between strokes in order to glide as far as possible on each stroke.
By the way, gliding is harder than it looks. You have to be perfectly balanced *and* also in body position for the next stroke with your arms. You also have to be relaxed and not tense, and not anticipate the next stroke but just wait patiently for the right moment and let it happen. Total Immersion drills really helped here.
3. Forget breathing. I haven't perfected breathing without some slowdown, so I elected to hyperventilate and recover fully before each length, so that I could swim the entire 25y without taking a breath.
4. The push off the wall was with a traditional streamline, with both hands pointed into a spear in front of my head with one hand on top of the other. This allowed me to travel further before slowing down.
5. As Don mentioned, I too played with the first stroke, which was my right hand. I attempted to make that stroke also propel more further before my official first stroke (remember that my coach told me that the first stroke is counted *after* this initial stroke pulling the arm back from the first streamline). This was difficult, and very much brought me back to skating drills; I had to stroke back strongly and then get into skating position without losing balance. Once I get the knack of that, I could go 11 yards or so before taking my first stroke.
6. One interesting note. I tried to glide with my arm up in cocked position, ready for the next stroke as Don suggests, but I found that where my previous head position was, this would actually drive my head forward and deeper into the water, sometimes actually even sinking me down! This was not good, as it did not allow me to use gravity to drop my cocked arm down into the water and forward into the next stroke. In fact, being partially submerged made it harder to even perform that movement with that cocked arm. So I had to actually lift my head up slightly, which counterbalanced my dropping hips with the cocked arm's weight and I was riding much better and higher on the water that way.
7. I practiced minimizing my leg movement between strokes. I relaxed and tried to keep the insides of my feet lightly touching. This minimized drag.
8. One thing I tried actually not to do was to glide too much with my recovery arm in stationary cocked position. I was feeling like this may relate to some of the comments my friends and I have regarding efficiency training as "cheating" because you glide so much and this doesn't happen in real swimming. While I have come to feel that super slow swimming for efficiency training is not cheating, I felt that it was better to just pretend that I was super duper slow motion swimming where my recovery arm never really stops moving. In this way, I could just imprint the movement, however slow, and in theory speed it up and hopefully keep form.
Super slow swim training really works, in my opinion. I can really examine everything my body does in slow motion, and I know when something is wrong when all of a sudden I need an extra stroke to the touch the wall. Or, sometimes I need to glide just a little longer on that last stroke to hit the wall. Then I replay my length in my head and try to remember where I didn't do so well and try to not to that again on the next length.
I went to a Yin Yoga class and unfortunately thought it was kind of bogus. Not bogus in its practice, but bogus in the fact that I had to pay $20 for an hour of super long stretching.
So no more dishing out $20, but I do now do some super long stretching at home. One I've been working on is laying on a foam roller, and then letting one arm, bent at 90 degrees and held perpendicular to the body, just drop with its own weight over a period of 3-4 minutes. I have found that my pectoralis minor has been really tight due to swimming, and I need to get it and the supporting fascia to release. The only way to do this is to relax completely, and let my arm slowly drift downward as muscles, joints, and fascia slowly release their tension. It's kind of amazing; over 3 minutes, my arm will start out there in the air and then slowly drop all the way down to the ground.
The trick is to put yourself in a position to relax completely. This means that you can't be supporting yourself with a hand or arm; that will automatically put tension in your body. I bought a cotton bolster which I sometimes use to lay on and support myself while stretching various body areas.
I tried this many years ago when I took martial arts. It was my lifelong dream to do Chinese splits. But I never could do it. In fact, I would sometimes pull muscles by stretching too long. I think my mistake back then was that I needed to find a way to stretch muscles and be able to get completely relaxed. If I tense up at any point, it could set me up for potentially overstretching my muscles and hurting myself. Perhaps I will try again to attain the Chinese split position and finally achieve my own Jean Claude Van Damme super split kicks!
]]>By the way, I have figured out that the tempo trainer, in concert with counting strokes for a given length, is an excellent way to determine if you are working out at a level that is consistent with past workouts. On my bike I know I can do this with my Computrainer and training by watts; on running, I have the relentless treadmill to repeat training conditions, and also measured distances and times on either the track or known running paths. For a long time, I didn't have a good way of doing that with swimming. I only had swim times per length or lap, but I don't think that is good because I may be swimming with more or less efficiency across workout days but yet still hit the same time for a length or lap. Now, with the tempo trainer and counting strokes, I have a more precise measure as to how I'm swimming, how much effort I am putting into that interval, and even know when I should get out of the pool because I'm tiring.
My reason, thus, for determining my tempo at my 10 SPL is to figure out how to maintain SPL while increasing tempo, which should mean that I am maintaining efficiency while increasing my speed.
I had a pleasant surprise though; I hit 9 SPL! Here are my results:
Tempo 2.6 seconds:
11, 9 strokes
10, 9
9, 9
Tempo 2.5 seconds:
10, 9 strokes
10, 9
9, 9
Tempo 2.4 seconds:
10, 9 strokes
9, 9
9, 9
Tempo 2.3 seconds:
10, 10 strokes
10, 10
10, 10
I began at 2.6 seconds on my tempo trainer, which is almost unbearably slow. I knew my 10 SPL was also at a very slow tempo, so I just started here. Then I increased it by .1 seconds, doing 6x25 at each tempo. I flipped flop for a while between 9 and 10 SPL and eventually could not maintain 9 SPL at 2.3 seconds. This is my critical point at which I need to see if I can pull it down to 9 SPL at some point.
Some notes:
1. I need to relax more and not anticipate the beep of my tempo trainer. This caused me to lose balance as my body began to turn in anticipation of the beep coming but I was conditioned to swim at a faster tempo and I would turn too soon, resulting in an unbalanced position while gliding and creating drag.
2. My body was unstable and I need to learn to maintain my glide position and balance in the water for longer. I got better at this as my session went on. Also, being tired from the previous day's swim session didn't help.
3. For some reason, I had a decently coordinated switch with my left hand driving forward/right hand stroking back, but my right hand driving/left hand stroking was terrible. Bad hip drive with bad arm drop, and even bad beginning body position because of item 1 above. I need to make sure my switch/stroke is perfectly coordinated. Swimming super slow is tough!
4. I need to hang my head more; at times I seemed to lift up and I know my hips are also dropping as a result, creating more drag. This seemed to happen intermittently.
5. Relaxing is key and maintaining perfect balance, slightly on either side as my arm recovers overhead, so that I just glide with minimal water disturbance and drag.
6. Sometimes my feet would start to drift apart, mostly in anticipation of the beep and wanting to do a kick. But the beep wouldn't come and then my kick was cocked for longer than it need be, creating more drag. Need to keep them together for more streamlining.
7. Breathing still slows me down. I need to practice doing this more at slower speeds.
8. Despite the problems, there were times I felt that my stroke and glide between beeps was perfect. I would stroke with a perfect switch and arm drop, and then I would be in perfect gliding position as my arm recovered overhead and timed the next beep perfectly. This is the situation I need to imprint and work on repeating over and over again.
]]>I did want to test two things, which was to see what my SPL was for a 50m length, and also practice a bit of longer distance tempo training at various tempos.
Here are my results for trying to minimize SPL for 50m:
38, 36, 37, 33, 35, 35 strokes
That was a vast improvement for my usual 50 strokes to hit the other wall of a 50m length!
After that, I did some tempo training by doing 100m laps at 1.6 seconds tempo, and then lowering my tempo by .1 seconds for each 100m thereafter until I hit .8 seconds. Definitely finding that I am limited now, because I really haven't been training for distance in the last few months but only on refining technique. As it gets warmer, I will begin to add a longer distance swim each week just to practice long distance at various tempos. But I don't want to turn all my workouts into distance training as I don't have any race to train for this coming year, but rather want to focus on cementing and imprinting the right body movements for technique.
]]>I weigh about 150 lbs., or 68 kg. Therefore, I should be taking in about 68 grams of protein each day. Looking back on my typical long training day, I'd actually not eat much until after my swim/ride/run - about 8.5 hours later. Then I'd eat a cake of tofu and a bowl of rice, and then a big dinner. But that doesn't add up 68 grams of protein; it'd often fall short.
For Ironman CDA 2009, I really was training hard on my long days. But my recovery would often stretch out to 4 days where I could not do my normal loads until then. It was not until I started taking extra protein in the form of powder dumped into my normal recovery drink that amazingly my recovery was brought in an astounding 2 days!
I never would have thought that I wasn't eating enough to recover. Obviously I was wrong. Now I supplement with protein powder in my recovery drink regularly to make sure I get enough protein to repair my damaged muscles, and to make sure I am as fully recovered, in as short a time as possible.
]]>My best SPL before this was 12 strokes for 25y. I was determined to do better, but also figure out what I needed to do to actually get a low SPL.
On my first 2 tries, I hit 11 SPL. Then I hit 10 SPL and held that for 4 lengths, and then ping ponged between 11 and 10 SPL as I got tired.
Some thoughts on getting to a lower SPL:
1. For this exercise, I had to lower my tempo a great deal. This increased my glide time for each stroke.
2. At higher tempos, I try to ride my speed curve, meaning that I try not to let my speed drop too far as my current stroke ends, before my next stroke picks up the acceleration again. But for this exercise, I let myself get further down the deceleration part of the curve after my current stroke ends, and I let myself maximize my glide before my next stroke begins. This minimizes my stroke count and maximizes the distance I glide for each stroke.
3. I found that I for each stroke, I had to really stroke back with great force, as well as shooting the lead hand forward at the same time. This is to maximize the distance I cover with each stroke. However, I tried to do so with proper form, not throwing water with my rear hand backward, really engaging the core in my stroke for more energy, and using my kick to give my rotating hip extra energy.
4. My bodyline needed to be perfect. It needed to be straight and extremely streamlined, so that on each glide I would minimize deceleration due to body drag.
5. My body also needed to be stable, and not be rocking back and forth during a stroke and glide. Any kind of extra movement creates drag.
6. I need to be as relaxed as possible and just let my body glide in between strokes. A tense body creates all sorts of disruptions leading to more drag in the water. Besides, it also wastes energy.
In some ways, I felt like I was cheating; I would just stroke once and then ride the glide for as long as possible. In thinking more about this, I think this is a beginning to a set of exercises to increase efficiency in the water. I had to go through this first to figure out what it would take to get to 10 SPL. What did I need to do to my body? My stroke? How much force do I need to generate with each stroke?
Obviously to maintain my SPL at a higher tempo, I would have to be moving faster and farther with each stroke or else my increased tempo would add a stroke before I would cover the same amount of distance per stroke, at a lower tempo. This means I have to do all those items I noted above, but just at a higher rate and with more forward acceleration and momentum.
My next task is to slowly increase my tempo and seeing if I can still maintain my 10 SPL, and then find my breakpoint tempo-wise where I cannot maintain 10 SPL no matter what I do. This is a critical point at which I'll have to practice a lot.
As a triathlon enthusiast, I'm a big believer in consuming as much information about the topic as possible so that I have a broad knowledge base to draw from. Right now there is so much that is crap out there about training it's really bad. The sport is advancing so much but yet very little has been captured in literature that is available to the public; a lot of people are still ingrained in old traditional ways of training, some of which is very harmful and unproductive. So I thought I'd list some of my favorite DVDs and books on training for your perusal.
A word about DVDs: I have found that training by DVD is pretty tough if you're just starting out. I think it's much better to use DVDs as a supplement to training, versus using it solely. Working with a live, good coach is much better, or even if you attend a seminar by a DVD author, it is better than just viewing the DVD by itself. However, viewing video is great for visualization, so that when you see someone performing great technique, you can watch the video over and over to imprint it into your brain.
Swimming
TI Swim Japan's Youtube Channel - my Total Immersion coach Shinji Takeuchi maintains a great collection of videos for learning and teaching the TI techniques. Sometimes I just watch Shinji swim and try to imprint his smooth body movement.
Terry Laughlin's blog, founder of Total Immersion - Wow amazing tidbits from the man behind TI.
Total Immersion DVDs and books - Order it all here, for reference in practicing your TI swimming!
Breakthrough Swimming and Swimming into the 21st Century by Cecil Colwin - Great historical perspectives on swimming and how people trained for swimming way back when. Lots of great stuff on competitive training techniques.
Swimming Fastest by Ernest Maglischo - Another huge tome on all aspects of swimming technique and training.
Cycling
Training and Racing with a Power Meter by Hunter Allen, Andrew Coggan - I am a big proponent of power training. This is a bible of power training, although some of the concepts are hard to apply. It's good to read to see what people are doing with it.
Watts Per Kilogram by Richard Wharton - I love my Computrainer, and this book shows you details on how to use it.
Watts Per Kilogram by Richard Wharton, free from iBikeSports but adapted for use with the iBike Power Meter. I bought one once but found it was hard to calibrate. I like my Powertap much better.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist: Fit, Fast, and Powerful in 6 Hours a Week by Chris Carmichael, Jim Rutberg - Great insight into how to train the quality way, and the effects of training volume on performance.
Spinervals DVDs - Before I got my Computrainer, I used this DVDs to help me train. They are even better with my Computrainer as now I can more accurately repeat workouts from a load standpoint. My favorites are these two, which I use if it's raining or cold out:
Spinervals: Competition 26.0 - The Hardcore 100 - a 5.5+ hour interval workout on the cycling trainer.
Spinervals: Competition 13.0 - Tough Love - a great 3 hour interval workout, which I would do twice when forced to cycle indoors and before the Hardcore 100 workout came out.
Serious Cycling - 2nd Edition and High-Tech Cycling - 2nd Edition by Edmund R. Burke - Two great collections of deep research into cycling performance.
Running
Lore of Running by Tim Noakes - The ultimate resource on the science of running.
Dr. Nicholas Romanov's Pose Method of Running and companion DVD - This was the first resource I used to change my bad running form of heel striking to a much better mid to fore foot strike. I like a lot of his drills, but some of his drills were downright strange and I didn't get into them much.
Galloway's Book on Running by Jeff Galloway - His run/walk method got me through my first NYC marathon; he really reinforced the fact that you don't have to run the whole way and that it's OK to walk - something that you often do during the Ironman marathon! I unfortunately don't agree with his recommendations on not stretching.
ChiRunning DVD - Similar philosophies to Pose method, I found the small section on down hill running to be very illuminating.
Recovery and Sports Medicine
Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists by Thomas W. Myers - Anatomy trains are chains of muscles that have been shown to work in concert. Treating the area where acute pain is felt may not be the complete and most effective solution; treating all the muscles in the chain is even better. Combining ART and Graston with anatomy trains theory makes treatment that much more effective.
Muscle Medicine: The Revolutionary Approach to Maintaining, Strengthening, and Repairing Your Muscles and Joints by Rob DeStefano, Joseph Hooper, Bryan Kelly - This book shows you how to perform ART on yourself!
Functional Soft-Tissue Examination and Treatment by Manual Methods, Third Edition by Warren Hammer - A heavy, in-depth book on all sorts of treatment methods, including ART and Graston.
Other Training
Jumping into Plyometrics: 100 Exercises For Power & Strength by Donald A. Chu - I'm experimenting with plyometrics now, to improve my sprint speed and power generation.
Periodization-5th Edition: Theory and Methodology of Training by Tudor Bompa, G. Gregory Haff - The original guy behind training periodization wrote this book. Great reference for understanding training and how to use periodization to your advantage.
DVD: Resistance Stretching With Dara Torres by Dara Torres, Anne Tierney, Steven Sierra - I have played with resistance stretching but have not had the time to get really into it. But whatever works for Dara Torres must work for moi, no?
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Core Conditioning Illustrated by Ed.D. Patrick S. Hagerman - A great basic guide to core training, showing you a whole bunch of core and balance exercises.
Inspiration
Ultramarathon Man by Dean Karnazes - Dean is an amazing athlete, and shares his journey to where he is today.
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall - Amazing story about a group of people living in Mexican mountains who run barefoot, and never get hurt. Perhaps this is why we should chuck our running shoes?
30 Years of the Ironman World Triathlon Championship by Bob Babbitt - The look through history of the Ironman Championships never ceases to inspire me to go out and race yet another Ironman.
Age Is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams at Any Stage in Your Life by Dara Torres, Elizabeth Weil - In her mid-forties, Dara went to the Olympics and set new world records; proof that as we get older, we don't have to slow down. I want to be just like Dara Torres!
Comeback 2.0: Up Close and Personal by Lance Armstrong - Following Lance through his recent comeback, a great pictoral on his path from retirement to 3rd overall at the 2009 Tour De France. Can I have a comeback like that every year?
We Might As Well Win: On the Road to Success with the Mastermind Behind Eight Tour de France Victories by Johan Bruyneel, Bill Strickland, Lance Armstrong - A great look at thoughts, strategies, and life of Johan Bruyneel, who led Lance Armstrong's cycling team to 8 Tour De France victories.
What, no triathlon books? I looked at a few and none really stood out for me. The knowledge in those books was OK; for some reason, I really didn't learn much from reading. I got better information from talking to my experienced racing friends. I also tried some training programs in those books but, like most training programs found in books, they were way too generic and did not adequately prepare me for a great race. Yes, they did get me to the finish line but did not address my individual needs and tell me how to work on my weaknesses.
An even better source was my coach Mike McCormack who also runs a great triathlon training studio in San Francisco called M2 Revolution. M2 has such progressive training ideas that only now am I finding discussion on similar training techniques, like in Chris Carmichael's Time Crunched Cyclist book. Basically, you don't have to put in a huge amount of training hours or miles; quality is much more important than quantity. But yet, you still hear of coaches putting their athletes through tons of junk mileage training. It's wasteful and doesn't help you get past plateaus after you reach a certain level of fitness and ability. You can read about his training philosophies on his M2 Articles page.
After warming up, I set my tempo trainer at 1.6 seconds, swam 4x25, then lowered my tempo by .1 seconds, swam another 4x25, until I got to 1.2 seconds tempo where I determined my comfort breakpoint usually is.
Here are my results:
1.6 seconds, SPL: 13, 12, 12, 12
1.5 seconds, SPL: 4x12
1.4 seconds, SPL: 4x13
1.3 seconds, SPL: 4x13
1.2 seconds, SPL: 13, 13, 13, 14
Once I started getting tired at 1.2 seconds, I drifted to 14 SPL and stopped, knowing I would probably get frustrated with trying to keep my SPL with rising fatigue.
At my next workout, I decided to go even faster. My coach tells me that sprinting tempo is around .8-.9 seconds. I wanted to see what that felt like and whether I could even keep up a decent form. Starting from 1.6 seconds tempo to give myself a bit of warmup, I did 2x25 at each tempo setting until I got .8 seconds.
Here are my results:
1.6 seconds, SPL: 13 12
1.4 seconds, SPL: 13 13
1.2 seconds, SPL: 14 14
1.1 seconds, SPL: 15 15
1.0 seconds, SPL: 16 16
0.9 seconds, SPL: 17 16
0.8 seconds, SPL: 17 17
The fast tempos are too fast for me at this point. My body coordination to stroke, body turn, and kick, as well as breathing at that tempo is a bit too difficult to maintain right now. I also found that I could not maintain my stroking force as well as when my tempo is slower. In order to maintain tempo, I have to reduce my force and just get used to cycling my arms at that speed.
Computation of speed to complete a 25y length is, using my coach's formula:
1.2 seconds @ 14 SPL: 20.4 seconds
1.1 seconds @ 15 SPL: 19.8 seconds
1.0 seconds @ 16 SPL: 19 seconds
0.9 seconds @ 17 SPL: 18 seconds
0.8 seconds @ 17 SPL: 16 seconds
One of these workouts, I have to time myself to see how accurate these time computations really are.
Observations:
1. I think that I did not "spin" and that I was actually gliding a bit with each stroke. But it was harder to see this effect at the higher speed.
2. I need to find a way to maintain force at higher tempos. To maintain that force is very difficult for me now and also cycle fast.
3. My coach told me that when you cycle faster, you need to stroke shorter, lifting your arm out of the water sooner. Also, everything is happening faster so I have to get used to doing the whole swim movements faster and precisely. At the same time, I need to be as relaxed as when I was swimming with slower tempo. Tensing up just makes me slower and more tired.
4. Like with running, I am going to start neuromuscular training for swimming. I think I will add in a training session where I am just swimming at fast tempo, but not necessarily caring what my SPL is.
]]>I warmed up and then instead of only practicing Strokes Per Length (SPL) I did SPL with the tempo trainer.
As one workout, I will practice SPL without caring about tempo. I just keep trying to maintain the lowest SPL for as many 25y lengths as possible, until I start to tire. This time I decided to do something slightly different. I wanted to see if I could maintain the same SPL but at a higher tempo. In doing so, I could practice efficiency but at higher speeds. I can start practicing what it takes to be efficient at higher tempos, and what I need to do in my stroke and body position to make it so.
I started at 2.0 seconds on my tempo trainer and did the first 25y length at 13 strokes then got to 12 strokes on the next three 25y lengths. I then went to 1.9 seconds and maintained 12 SPL for four 25y lengths. I then dropped to 1.8 seconds and so on, swimming four 25y at 12 SPL at every tempo setting. I finally found my limit at 1.5 seconds where I was feeling like I was gliding a little bit longer at my 12th stroke to the wall. At 1.4 seconds I lost 12 and did 13. I tried for the next three lengths to hit 12 and think on the last one I could have finally glided to the wall on 12, but took the extra stroke anyways.
It was very interesting to note exactly what I had to do to maintain 12 SPL especially at faster tempos. At 1.5 seconds, I really had to shoot the forward arm fast while stroking back with the other arm with more speed/force. But I also had to do this by being more relaxed and not tense, and also making sure my body streamline was more precise. Just more stroking force and forward arm speed was not enough. At 1.4 seconds tempo, it took me 3 lengths to get the right technique to barely make the 12, even as I took the 13th stroke to firm up hitting the wall.
I was also getting tired too so that didn't help. In addition, as my tempo rose, it seemed my breathing technique got messier and I was not gliding as much when I took a breath.
I sent this to my coach for feedback and he told me that this is a good thing, which is to be able to control my speed at the same stroke count. He estimated my time to hit the wall on a 25y length at 2.0 seconds tempo to be about 30 seconds (12 SPL x 2.0 seconds tempo + 2.0 seconds tempo x 3 additional strokes my coach adds for the push off the wall and glide = 30 seconds). Using the same formula, at 1.5 seconds tempo it took me about 22.5 seconds. So between 30 seconds to 22.5 seconds I could control my speed and still maintain my SPL.
He also told me that my body position must be more precise as I increase my tempo, and that being tense will make me slower. He mentioned that as I practice the various tempos, I can eventually determine what part of my body I should loosen and tighten up to maintain SPL.
He then told me to practice the same process with 13 strokes, but now at a faster tempo range like 1.6 to 1.3 seconds. Then I repeat until I get to 15-16 SPL at a super fast 0.8 seconds. If I can master this tempo control and maintain efficiency, then I can employ a variety of speeds during races.
Cool stuff. I think over the next few weeks I will work a bit on seeing if I can maintain 12 SPL at higher tempos for some of my workout sessions. I will also try to figure out what it is my body needs to do to be more efficient at higher tempos. It will be critical in figuring out how to get faster in the water and not just be exponentially increasing my effort needlessly to get a tiny increase of speed.
]]>The object is to practice good streamlining, relaxation and no tension. If you do it right, you will zip farther in the pool before you stop than if you have poor streamlining or have an extremely tightness in your body.
My Coach Shinji can glide 18y on a single push off. It's pretty freakin' amazing:
One exercise I did was to see how many Superman Glides it would take to get to the end of a 25y pool. At first, it took me about 4.5. Over the last few months, I experimented with a lot of tweaking of my body positioning and finally made it in 3 glides. Some things I found that worked:
1. Relaxing is much better than stiff or tight. I just exercise enough tension to hold my arms straight out in front of my head, and to extend my legs. But no more than that.
2. However, relaxing totally didn't work either. It meant that my body was a bit too loose and resulted in a less streamlined profile than holding enough tension to extend my body more sleekly.
3. I discovered that narrowing my body profile by extending my arms forward of my head is better than just putting them out there in a "V". my shoulders are actually extended forward with my arms so it reduces the width of my shoulders.
4. I straightened my back, which feels a bit like arching the back to remove the natural curve of the spine. This is also achieved by rotating the hips forward a bit. A flat back seems to make me go further.
5. My legs do not just hang back relaxed. There is too much drag if they are just hanging out straight. Instead, I make a conscious effort to keep them straight back and touch my feet gently together, which puts my legs in my slipstream.
6. On the push off from the bottom of the pool, I plant my feet firmly before pushing off. I also try to push forward, which is tough because the bottom of the pool is slippery. It is better to plant the feet on the non-tile portion of a lane. Tiles are much more slippery than the other non-tile surfaces of the pool bottom.
I push off as straight as possible. Any angle or upset in my direction will either push me into a lane line or cause me to rock, which increases drag.
I try to push off as hard as possible. This is very hard because my feet slip on the bottom, even if they are not on the tiles. A harder push means more forward momentum, but is hard to achieve because your feet don't have a nice surface to grip onto.
7. As I glide and slow, there is a tendency for my legs to drop. I try to flex whatever muscles in my back I can to keep my legs as high as possible, and to extend the time before my legs drop. Letting your legs drop is OK as far as the exercise goes, but it does not let you achieve your maximum length glide.
I only let my legs drop when I come to a complete stop.
8. By the way, you should be rested and not out of breath from warming up, or doing laps before. Gliding a long time also means holding your breath a long time until your forward motion stops so you don't want to stop the glide early just because you're running out of air!
9. I am very sensitive to the water flowing around every inch of my body. As I develop my position, I try to sense where is water causing drag on my body and where it is not. If there is drag, I try to change something on the next glide to see if I can remove the drag. This is also helpful during regular swimming, which is to see if anything on your body is slowing you down.
One of these days, I hope to achieve an 18y ultimate Superman Glide!
]]>Everytime I work with him, I always get a few more tidbits of insight from him. Some notes:
1. Practice varying the entry point from very wide to very narrow. Find the place which is most comfortable and also generates the most speed. Open water swimming tends to have a wider entry point than in the pool. Narrow entry points allow for longer hand motion under the water as the hand shoots forward, generating more momentum.
2. Wetsuits don't allow as much roll so you have to learn how to generate motion on a wider track.
3. Push down on the instep when snapping the kick.
4. If I increase tempo too fast, then I could spin, which is when my arms are just cycling but I stop after each stroke and there is no glide. I must learn how to increase the tempo but do not spin.
5. If my SPL jumps at a certain tempo then this is the point at which something is wrong or something has changed.
6. At each tempo, I should count stroke and look at how it changes as tempo changes.
During this session, Shinji and I started at 1.2 seconds tempo, and did 25y lengths counting strokes, with each length decreasing the tempo by .1 seconds. I did this all the way up to 2.0 seconds tempo, and my SPL ranged from 15 in the beginning to 12 at the end. Then I increased the tempo by .1 seconds for each 25y length, all the way down to 1.2 seconds. I discovered that at around 1.3 seconds, my SPL jumped to 15 and realized that at this point, I needed to concentrate on what had changed, and how to maintain SPL.
7. Slower tempo requires more relaxation and good balance. There is more gliding, so you need to glide with balance and not rock.
8. Eventually I need to get to .8-.9 seconds tempo, which is sprinting and used when you're trying to break out of a pack of swimmers during a race.
9. I need to turn the elbow slightly inward which will prepare my hand for the catch. This is also done my turning the thumb in and down. If my elbow is turned the other way, then I will waste a bit of time getting my arm in position for the catch, which can deter me from achieving a higher tempo.
10. When skating, I need to end my hand on top of my thigh, or else my body will more easily over rotate.
11. When I swim, I am throwing water backward with my right hand and not my left. Need to examine this further. I should not be throwing water back.
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