The problem is that if you want to compete in endurance sports, then quantity (or volume) IS quality.  Let’s face it, the basis of our racing is quantity. Heck our sport is used as a punchline when referring to extreme endurance. So let’s split the triathlon up and look at the best in the three individual sports to see how much they train. Then we’ll circle back around to the triathlon sport as a whole.

Swimming – Outside of open water swimming, most of the events in competitive swimming are relatively short compared to the other two sports in triathlons.  Swimming also has an enormous emphasis on technique; something the other two sports don’t really have to worry about. Having said that, because the low impact/ low stress nature of swimming, you will see the highest training volume to racing distance ratios. Just look at Olympians Ryan Lochte, Michael Phelps, and even sprinter Alain Bernard.

Lochte has mention that regular training for him is around 100,000 meters per week. Phelps was training 90,000 meters per week as early as age 11 and well above that now. And Bernard? the 100 meter sprint champion? You got it. 100,000 meters per week for a race that lasts less than 50 seconds.

Cycling – While an incredible amount of volume is done to compete in the sport of cycling, there are usually great distances covered in the races as well. The average pro cyclist spends about 450 to 500 miles per week on the bike. Of course if your name is Lance Armstrong then you would be riding almost that much by the age of 13. Want to make the podium of a major tour? Then find a comfy saddle because you’ll be sitting on it for about 700 miles per week.

Running – fits inbetween swimming and cycling when it comes to the training volume to race distance ratio. The tricky thing with running, moreso than the other two sports, is that training durability is much more of an issue. To put it another way, because of the high impact/ high stress nature of running, large amounts of volume need to be built up very gradually so that you don’t get hurt. Having said all of that though, You would be hard pressed to find a middle distance or distance runner in the elite ranks running less than 100 miles per week. Sort of a training minimum in the world of the elite. Take Deana Kastor, marathon Olympic medalist and American record holder. When asked about her training volume in Track & Field Magazine, she responded, “We haven’t really focused as much on mileage this time around as we have on quality workouts. I was typically getting up to 140 miles per week and keeping it up there for a few weeks in a row in the past. This time, I’ve gone to about a 120 miles and feel great doing it.” Hmmmm….decreasing to a meager 120 miles per week.

Triathlon – While training for 3 sports instead of one can be a complicated task, one thing is consistant with the single event sports. Volume. Triathletes don’t do near the volume that single athletes do in their respective sports, but if you look at the training as a whole, you’ll see that top triathletes put in some very long days in their quest to be the best. Numbers you typically see are 300-400 miles on the bike, 45-60 miles running, and about 20,000+ meters in the pool.

So what is my point? Afterall, you’re not a pro and don’t have the time to spend all day training. While you may not be able to put up the huge numbers the pro’s do, the strategy should be the same. Volume first, intensity second. If you are looking to get better in triathlons, or would like to do well in an Ironman, then volume needs to be far and away your first focus. Are you going to be able to fit in 45 miles of running every week? Maybe not. But if you take a look at your training logs and you find yourself focusing your week around the track workout at the expense of the long run, or trying to fit in weights instead of swimming or cycling, then you’d be wise to reevaluate. Speed workouts are great, just make sure they don’t negatively effect the total volume. If you’re racking up 15 miles of running per week in your preparation for an Ironman, look for ways to get a little more quantity in each week, not for ways to add another speed workout in that 15 miles. No one ever gets to mile 23 of an Ironman run and wish they had done more windsprints.

Which brings me back to my initial thought. When I surf around the internet in the various forums I read a lot of training advice from triathlon coaches of all kinds. The information they offer is often all over the place. Some good, some strange, some dangerous. Many of these coaches have taken a weekend seminar and are now certified experts. Others have grabbed a book or two and after flipping through them consider themselves experienced. If the one’s that you’re looking at claim that you will get more out of short, intense workouts then all that boring volume, then start asking some questions. If they say that they don’t believe in a ‘base’ period (more on the here), you might want to get a second opinion before you open your checkbook.

I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine (and college coach) this past weekend at a championship meet and we got on a very similar discussion. When she goes to swim meets where the athletes are slower/newer, the coaches at those meets have training philosophies that are all over the board. When she goes to a national event where the faster swimmers race, the coaches are extremely similar in how they think. I think you see my point here.

Something to keep in mind the next time you’re shopping for a coach or reading all those opinions on the internet.

Good luck with your training.

There are a couple of other things going on here as well in conjunction with this, but you have to look a little closer. First of all, if you look at the above water shot, you can see that the head doesn’t just dip down, but it also dips over. This will cause a person to swim crooked faster than anything. In swimming, you have to envision yourself on a barbecue skewer. The head and body stay in a straight line just as if you had a skewer running through your head, while your body rotates on that axis to pull, kick and breathe. If your body breaks from that axis by wiggling, bending or moving your head from one side to the other, you lose efficiency and often swim crooked. That can kinda be a problem in the middle of a lake. Additionally, watch the left hand as Kent’s head takes that dive. Notice how his hand turns to the side with the pinkie finger down at the onset of the pull. It looks as if Kent is attempting to keep the entry and pull in in-line and he overcompensates for the head by dropping the elbow on the extension and turning his hand so as to keep the good rotation. The problem is that his misses the first and very powerful part of the pull because his hand is sideways. Keeping the head straight should correct most of this, but focusing on the position of the hand as the pull starts will be important in order to correct this.

Speaking of the pull, look at the right arm during the pull. The pull itself looks really good on both arms as you can see that he is getting some power out of each pull, but during that pull there are a bunch of bubbles being dragged through the water. This mostly has to do with the hand entry. His hand enters well beyond the top of his head and is therefore entering at a steep angle. If Kent were to make a shallower entry by entering a little closer to the top of his head, he can remove those bubbles and get  a better grip on the water.

Finally, I want to touch on the overall body position. From the side-view video you can see that Kent’s legs are dragging just a tad by the end of the length. This is due mainly to the effectiveness of the the kick. While the mechanics of the kick seem to be spot on, it’s the ankle flexibility that is the problem. Simple enough fix. Stretch out your ankles and you will generate more power from you kick.

The beauty here is that a couple of small adjustments will probably fix a number of issues, so there aren’t tons of things to focus on and get confused with. Hopefully straightening the head and bilateral breathing will have a domino effect and fix some of the other issues in the stroke.

Now go get in the water.

If you haven’t heard, The Woodlands, TX and the World Triathlon Corporation are in discussions about putting a full Ironman in Texas.  Most of the issues have been worked through and it seems that all that’s left is the vote. Click below to listen to the township discussion. The vote comes June 23rd. I will post that as well if I have the audio/video. Keep your fingers crossed.

wdlndsironman

A while back I met up with Kyle to take a look at his stroke. You can see right away that he has a good rhythm and is comfortable in the water. He’s an Ironman finisher, so this isn’t exactly his first lap in the pool. There are a couple of things that jump out at me right way though. And that, if you read this site much, is the fun part, as I get to pick it apart. Let’s get started.

Looking at the above video it’s pretty clear that that Kyle is dropping his elbow. This is extremely common, and often hard to fix for alot of people. Watch as his right arm pulls through the water. About a third the way through the pull you can see a definitive “<” form with his arm (Let pretend that this symbol < represents his arm). It becomes pretty clear to see that his elbow is leading that vertical plane of his pull through the water. Want you want to see is is more of an upside-down, backwards “L”. pulling through the water. In other words, his forearm needs to be vertical.  Need a better visual than “<”? Fair enough. Lets do a side by side with Olympian Grant Hackett.

Notice how different Hackett’s pull looks. He gets his elbow so high that he is hyper-extending his lats. It almost looks a little freaky in that last pic. This is extremely effective as you might guess. He’s got some serious Olympic hardware afterall. Now look at Kyle’s. It is almost the exact opposite. For the many of you out there who have asked me and are still confused on exactly what a high elbow is, these pics couldn’t be a better visual.

This tends to be a tough habit to break. Drills like the fist drill, exaggerating a really deep pool, and various dryland/weight exercises can help break this.

The next thing that I notice is the lopsided pull and recovery that you can see from the above water shot. As you can see, Kyle likes to breathe to the left. While there’s no problem with doing this on race day, to do it all the time during training creates an imbalance. In other words, you create a weak arm and a strong arm by favoring one side to the other. Take another look at the above water shot. Notice where his left hand enters the water and extends versus the right hand. The left enters and extends pretty much straight forward. The right, on the other hand, enters the water and extends in a much wider position. There are other differences if you look underwater, but the bottom line is that having an unbalanced stroke can cause problems in your race. You will consistently swim off course, and the weak arm will tire and the form will begin to fail sooner. This all adds up to more work for you. The fix? Pretty easy actually. Learn to bilaterally breathe, or learn to breathe on both sides like a basketball player dribbles on both sides. Once you learn it, then you need to train using that style for at least 90% of your workout. Once you become proficient at it, you won’t even notice you are doing it. Then on raceday, just breathe as you need knowing that your form is balanced.

Here’s another shot of the unbalance. As you can see in the above clip, Kyle’s right arm pulls much deeper than the left. A big part of this is because his body rotation is more pronounced when he breathes. Nonetheless, if one arm is pulling deeper/better than the other, you are going to end up with problems. The fix is the same as before. Learn to breathe from both sides equally as comfortable. Otherwise, you are going to be frustrated come race day.

Lastly, I wanted to touch on Kyle’s kick briefly. In this clip you can get a pretty good look at his kick and his mechanics are really good. He kicks like one kicks a ball and not like he is running or cycling. The problem I see is the lack of flexibility in his ankles. The key to a good kick is that whipping motion you get from from a flexible ankle. Not unlike the motion of a fin. While it seems minor, an improved kick can make your life so much easier in the swim. The best part for kyle is that the fix is an easy one. STRETCH. Regularly do some kick sets with fins, and go home at night and sit on your ankles.

Good luck and see you before the cannon fires.

Let me go on the record by saying that I have literally shed blood, sweat and tears for my school while I swam there, and there are few things closer to my heart than Clemson. Heck, I was almost late for the start of the Hawaiian Ironman so I could catch College Gameday on tv at 4am (Hawaii time) when they came to town for the Georgia Tech game a few years ago. So its pretty safe to assume that I’m pretty pissed at my school right now. Is this over? I seriously doubt it. There are some pretty successful people that came out of the Clemson Swimming and Diving programs, so I wouldn’t be surprised if an effort is made to save the teams. We have two years to fix the problem after all.

I would ask this though. If you are a Clemson Alum that donates to IPTAY or just a swimmer who’s tired of teams and dreams getting cut, let Clemson know what you think. Right now I don’t plan on writing anymore checks to my school unless they come to a different conclusion. It saddens me to think that all that was accomplished, all the work, all the history, all the traditions, all the family members known as the Clemson Swimming and Diving Team, will simply be a page in the history books of such a fine university.

I never thought I would give a half assed cheer for my football team. I wonder what else is on TV in the fall…

 Happy Training.

As soon as Dana hopped in and started swimming I noticed that his back muscles were flexing on every recovery. Some call this a stiff stroke. I see it as a weak rotation and overcompensating by lifting your arms behind you in order to get your arms to clear the water during a recovery. Ideally, you want to to let your body rotation lift your shoulder out of the water. Then all you have to do is lift your arm straight up and drop it in the water. Very easy and very little effort. When you swim flatter in the water, you have to lift your shoulder/arm out of the water by flexing your back muscles in order to complete the recovery. The can get very tiring after a while and can also cause injury. I talk more about this type of injury here. In order for Dana to get the proper rotation, he needs to work on over exaggerating the  body roll. We tried it a few times that day and Dana mentioned it felt very strange, like it was too much rotation. For me watching though, it looked just right.

One of the other things that I noticed right away, is that Dana has some limited flexibility in his shoulders. Upon mentioning it though, Dana told me that he had an injury in his shoulder and that the the main reason for his lack of mobility. This will be a bigger challenge if you are injured, but still a very important thing to work on. I am always stressing flexibility here, but if one arm is less flexible than the other, then that means you have to over compensate in other areas of your stroke to keep everything in check. Depending on what those adjustments are, you could cause further injury. So if you don’t have symmetry in your stroke for some reason, that is something you should work on right away.

Overall Dana has a good head and body position, but you can see that his feet do sink/drag a little. If I was teaching you the Total Immersion method, I would tell you that Dana needs to lower his chest in the water to bring up his feet. The truth, however, is that Dana’s issue has nothing to do with balance or body position. It has everything to do with his kick. A very slight improvement in his kick will bring his feet to the surface and fix the problem. By burying your chest deeper into the water to avoid the problem can cause more problems (rotation, timing of the breath, etc) and to me, that’s putting a bandaid on a broken leg. Fix the problem, don’t mask it.

Speaking of the kick, here’s something interesting that I picked up on while watching his videos (never saw it at the pool). It’s easiest to see on the clip above (DL5).Dana’s right ankle is more flexible that his left. Why? His body rotates more to the right, so it takes a bigger/better kick to rotate in the opposite direction.  Remember when I mentioned earlier about overcompensating for his injury? I would be willing to bet that this ties in with his shoulder injury. So a injured shoulder causes one ankle

to be more flexible than another. If I just walked up and told you that you would think I’m out there huh? When you break it down though, it’s not such a stretch. Take that a step further, if Dana were to have a foot/ankle injury from running, it would all tie back to the shoulder. Crazy huh? Something to think about the next time you get hurt. Man I’m getting way off track here……Breathing every 3 in training and throwing on some fins from time to time with help his kick which will improve his rotation and the dropping/dragging of his legs.

In terms of pulling, Dana has a pretty good pull. This is usually the part of my post that I harp on dropping your elbow and losing power in your stroke. In looking at Dana’s stroke though, he has pretty good pull. He does drop his elbow a little and can work on that, but overall is good to go. I do notice though that his hands are pulling some bubbles. Very minor fix, but if he enters his hands a little sooner and still extends like he does underwater, he will correct that (He can also enter his hand a little steeper and then extend, it will accomplish the same thing.)

On second thought, Dana should swim less and race more using breastroke. I don’t really like it when he runs me down, so a little more buffer in the water would serve me well.