lrobb's group full - the work is plentiful, success is guaranteed! (Page 10)

We do run at a track for some of those exact reasons. As far as running goes she is a tad better than me she was a distance runner in high school so she is picking up faster than I who was a lineman in high school. Its really only the bike. I think that as she gets more comfortable she will start go pick up her pace. I get some friendly trash talking in and that typically works some. She is almost as competitive as I am.

She is running the same races that I am running so our training plan is exactly the same. I think that as I get her to do some longer rides things will pick up. plus she is about half the person that I am so climbing is much easier for her. The only thing I have going for me is these massive legs that have been hauling 340+ lbs around for almost 10 years.

just wanna say how much I learn with all I hear and with every race.
This last race turned into a duathlon - - and I learned I need to increase my total running distance each week.
I also learned that I need to nail those aerobars - there's a lot of wind in Idaho and pedaling into that is like running into a solid wall.
I also learned that I need to fuel up during the race - I bonked the last 3 miles due to lack of energy.
That's what I love - I'm always learning!

Swim tips from Big Fuzzy Doug. .... Long

Bigfuzzydoug’s Ten Points To Swimming:

The key to swimming is reducing drag, not endurance or powering through the water. This is not just my opinion, it is the law of physics. I’ll explain it in a simple way: When you bike, you have to push air in front of you out of the way. The bigger the frontal section of your body and bike, the more air you have to move. What’s worse is that it’s not a one to one relationship. An increase in speed requires the square of increase in power to move that air! The faster you want to go, small increases in speed requires exponentially more power to do it. That’s why we’re all so big on getting “aero” for cycling. If we can reduce that amount of air we have to push out of the way, it makes cycling drastically easier. While it might take Lance Armstrong 300 watts of power to bicycle at 30mph, it would take big, broad-shouldered, me, 500 watts of power to maintain that same speed. And while Lance can still ride 10mph faster, I’m pretty much at my aerodynamic limit.

Now here’s the bad news. Since water is much more dense than air, it requires THE CUBE to overcome hydrodynamic drag as you go faster! There is a massive difference between the power output while swimming at 1.5 mph and 2 mph. As you get faster, it gets (X times X times X) more difficult! Approaching 3 mph is close to the maximum and very few humans can sustain swimming at 4 mph. Beyond that, it’s virtually impossible. Our bodies are just not hydrodynamically shaped to do it. The World Record is 5.122 mph by Tom Jager (2.29 m/sec, 50 meters in 21:81 seconds). No matter how strong a swimmer’s muscles and how aerobically fit they are, it is theoretically impossible for a human to power-swim at speeds beyond this. We just don’t posses the wattage required to overcome the drag.

So rather than focusing on power and endurance, the first step is to minimize that drag. This is the most crucial part in learning how to swim! How?

1. Abandon any and all thoughts of pride and image. When you go to the pool and see other swimmers seemingly doing effortless lap after lap, do not get caught up the idea that you need to be doing the same. You have to do your exercises and not care about what anyone else may be thinking when they see you. Everyone practices drills, even the pro’s! So if you’re just going to be doing balance drills, so be it. In order to do flip turns, you have to practice the steps in turn and in order. If you ever see someone in the pool just doing forward summersaults from a standing position, they’re not weird – they’re practicing their flip turns! So just do your thing and don’t worry about what other people think. More than likely, the truly experienced swimmers will recognize what you’re doing and respect you for it.

2. I would recommend that you get the book or video Total Immersion's "Swimming Made Easy" or "Triathlon Swimming". If you do, practice those balance drills. Practice! Practice! Practice! I've been swimming for years and I still do them all the time! I practice my balance before every swim session. IN ORDER TO SWIM, YOU MUST BE BALANCED AND COMFORTABLE!

These are the basic balance principles:

Master the side-balance drill. When you do it, do it with your hands in FISTS! This will take away a 'feeling' of support. You'll only have your core to balance on. Stretch long, bottom arm stretched out, nose in your armpit (YES!), top arm on your hip and your legs as straight as they can be. Point your toes! Close your eyes and RELAX! Gently exhale and let the water support you. You should feel your top hand on your hip out of the water. If you want to, you may kick a little, but keep your toes pointed and DON'T BEND YOUR KNEES! Kick very lightly from your butt. If you move backwards, that's OK. Forward or backwards motion isn't the goal here. Also, if your legs start to sink, that's only natural. Drive your head down and put your ear against your armpit. This will bring your legs up a bit. Let's not kid ourselves here - having strong abs, obliques and back (a strong core) is paramount here! Strong core muscles will help to keep you straight. The off-season is the perfect time to get into Pilates. It is without a doubt, the best "strength training" you can do for your swimming!

So how do you breathe? It's easy, and yet, rather hard. SLOWLY rotate your head up (AND ONLY YOUR HEAD), by the neck alone, and take a breathe of air. Then SLOWLY rotate back down again. NOTHING ELSE SHOULD MOVE! Keep your hands in fists (FistGlove trainers really help). The temptation will be to use your hands to press down to support you as you rotate your head up. But this is exactly the thing we are trying to avoid and correct here! And what happens if you don't get the balance right? You'll probably sink. SO SINK! It's better to go under in the shallow end of the pool while maintaining the side-balance position than to lose it and use your hands to breathe. If you have to drown, THEN DROWN! You won't actually drown; you'll just stand up, breathe, say "damn!" and try again. Proper balance form under water is far better than poor form above it. Keep practicing (on each side) until you can maintain the side-balance position with NO BODY MOVEMENT for about 2 minutes. This is the foundation for all swimming.

Actual swimming tips:

3. “Displacement bodies in the water go faster with a longer hull.” This means that the longer you make your body (tips of your fingers all the way to your toes) the less drag your body will create. Long skinny sailboats are faster than shorter ones. How do I know this? I’m also a sailor! You are not a motorboat which goes so fast that it can plane up and above the water’s surface. You are a displacement boat and you need to move water out of the way in order to swim forward. SO LENGTHEN YOUR BODY! How? First, make your reach as far as it can go. Think of getting something off of the very top shelf of the kitchen cabinet. Do you face it shoulder square and reach up? No. You twist your body to one side and extend your shoulder. There you go - now you can reach it. Swimming is the exact same way. It's that twist (or roll) and the extension from you shoulders and lats. For an extra inch or two of reach, twist your hips in much the same way that a belly dancer would, one hip higher than the other. It’s from this ‘core’ that comes great swimming. So don’t ignore that Pilates class at the gym! Swimmers don't have huge arm muscles or triceps, they have great back, abdominal and oblique muscles! So makes sure that each and every reach is as far out in front of you as you can. It's a good stretch to. Go into the weight room before your swim and go to the chin-up bar. Grab it with one hand, twist, and let your body hang for 20-seconds. Do your belly dancer hip twist and see how far down you can go. It’s a great pre-swim stretch.

4. “Torpedoes move faster than oil tankers.” You have to try and maintain a slim, sleek, torpedo shape. Back and legs straight as a board. Think of your body swimming through a narrow two foot-wide-tube. Most swimmers legs tend to sink. You need to overcome this by two things. First, improve your back, abs and oblique core muscles. I can’t stress enough how good exercise like Pilates are for swimming! And second, “press your buoy.” By lowering your head and pressing your chest down, you raise your legs. This is known as “downhill swimming”.

Unusual Training Tip: Try to look at your feet! That's right. As you swim, I want you to try and look under and behind you. This is going to drive your head down, get your feet up and make you more streamlined in the water. Your chin should be against your chest.

5. “Be a front-quadrant swimmer”. So if a longer displacement body is faster in the water, always be a long body. Always have one arm full extended out in front of you. If one arm is out of the water in recovery and the other is under you pulling back, then you are only as long as you are tall. You will slow down as compared to always being 3 feet longer with one arm always extended. How do you do this?

A good drill is called the "thumb to hip drill". Before you bring one hand back in a stroke, make your thumbs touch in front of you. Feel the water flowing past your body. Then as you do your stroke, bring your hand ALL THE WAY back, make it touch your hip. This practice technique forces you to always be fully extended in the water. Later, as your swimming improves, the drill is called the “catch-up drill”. My personal style of swimming says to not move your arms like a kayak paddle. One arm is always fully extended. In order to do this, the recovering arm (out of the water) moves twice as fast as the arm in the water pulling. The recovering arm has to “catch up” in order to keep one arm always fully extended out in front of you. Yes, your arms do not move at the same speed. The key is to think, “as soon as my thumb hits my thigh, get it fully extended in front of me as fast as possible. But keep my pulling arm at the proper pace. Don’t pull too fast or too hard. Try to touch thumbs in front of me.”

Take a look at these time pictures of World Champion Ian Thorpe. http://www.cruciblefitness.com/images/thorpe400.jpgLookat pics 6 through 12. The leading hand is extending WHILE the pulling hand is moving back. It takes 7 picture frames for the pull. Now look at pics 5 through 8. It only takes 4 picture frames for the recovery hand to go from full back, to fully extended! His arms move at different speeds.

6. Breathing – Oh boy! The tough one. When you swim, you roll to breathe. When you breathe, your chin should be up against your shoulder and your eyes looking back at your shoulder. Keep that chin in! Don't lift your head. The moment you lift your head, you create a massive drag wave that slows you down. You might as well tow a parachute! If you keep your chin in tight to your shoulder, you'll have to roll your body to breathe. Your mouth will be right at the surface of the water and yes, you'll get a little water in your mouth - so just get used to it. You'll find that you can breathe just fine with a little water in your mouth. When you roll down again, just spit out with the exhale. Be an ambidextrous swimmer. Practice breathing from both sides. That's how you see where you are going and how you can see the people swimming on both sides of you. In an open-water triathlon with waves or sighting buoys, it's ok to occasionally lift your head to sight your bearing. Just don't do it too often - just enough to swim straight. If the water is choppy and has waves, your form won’t matter as much and you’ll have to lift some in order to site and breathe. But this is OK.

Some more on breathing:

In order to maintain that head-in position, as your roll to breathe, your chin has to stay in tight towards your armpit. Baseball players often have a big problem of pulling their heads up and away during their swing. This pulls their eyes away from the ball at the last moment and they often miss. They have a classic training technique to keep their heads in throughout a swing to keep their eye on the ball. They put a tennis ball under their chin and hold it during the swing. If the ball falls out, they're pulling their head. We can't swim with a tennis ball under our chin, but we can think about it and use the imagery to keep our heads tucked in tight. You have to think about keeping your chin in tight as if to hold a tennis ball in place.

The stroke: Let's do the breathing as an example from the RIGHT side. You can do this right now, sitting at your desk. Both arms are extended in front with your thumbs touching. As you start the right side pull, you begin to roll towards the right (left shoulder down). Now your left arm is fully extended with your shoulder extended (as if reaching for the mug in the back of the very top shelf) never flat to the bottom with your arm out. As your right thumb touches your thigh, your right elbow bends and begins to raise out of the water. Since you are rolled to the right and your head is down with your chin towards your chest, the only place for your chin to go is towards your armpit. As your right elbow comes up high out of the water you find your face looking almost behind you. This is how you sight the swimmers BEHIND you trying to catch you! You'll also find with a good roll, a high elbow and your chin in your armpit, that a big space of air at your mouth has been created. Now you breathe in! Make sure you've been exhaling through your nose while your face is under water. Do not waste any time exhaling with your mouth in the air. This is for intake only!

Now for the most important part! Remember, you’re not a planning motorboat. You can't rise up and plane over the water, so don't try to! We talked about the right arm during the pull, so what do you do with the left? IT STAYS FULLY EXTENDED OUT IN FRONT OF YOUR BODY! The most common thing beginner swimmers (and even experienced swimmers) do during the breathing stroke is to begin the pull on the other side too early. They do this not to pull water back and propel them forward, but rather, to push water DOWN to push them up and out of the water to breathe. It's a natural instinct to want to push yourself up higher out of the water to breathe, but don't do it! That's what will slow you down and ruin your rhythm. Not pulling during the breathing stroke with the extended arm is a very difficult thing to do. In order to do it - you have to have balance in the water. That's where your drills come in. You have to do those side-balance drills so that you can breathe with that left arm fully extended and not pushing down to raise you up. Achieving this is the most important and dramatic portion of your swimming stroke that will make you go longer and faster.

I CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH! As you rotate and breathe DO NOT BEGIN THE PULL STROKE! If there's one and only one thing to keep in your mind THIS IS IT! Just as in the the thumb to thigh drill, your recovery arm is coming forward overhead while you're rotating up to breathe, but your extended arm stays in front and extended. Otherwise, that pull will be a downward push and you'll lose precious momentum and increase drag.

7. Never hold your breath! As soon as your face goes back under water, start exhaling and continue until you empty your lungs. This does two things - It allows you to completely blow off the carbon dioxide in your lungs, thereby preventing the build-up of lactic acid in your muscles and keeping you from getting tired. And it makes breathing faster and easier because you're not wasting time exhaling with your mouth out of the water when you should be inhaling. See if you can practice swimming with this pattern: breathe in on the left, left stroke, right stroke, left stroke, breathe in on the right. If it's close to your normal breathing rate, great! Those two strokes with your head down and streamlined is what will really make you go farther and faster.

Here's a little experiment you can do right now. Take in a deep breath and hold it. How long can you hold your breath? What does it feel like? Now, hold your breath again but this time, take in a deep breath and blow it all out, entirely. Then hold on and see how long you can go until you have to take in the next breath? What does it feel like? It feels easier the second time because your lungs autonomically feel the urge to take a breath when there is a build up of CO2 in your lungs. If you exhale all of it out, you can trick your body into going longer.

8. "SWIM SLOWER TO GO FASTER!" You don't push the water back towards your feet; you grab the water and pull your body through the hole in the water that you made. The slower you try to swim, the more you have to concentrate on your form. There's a reason that those early morning Tai Chi people move very slowly. Spiritual enlightenment comes through proper form, not speed. When you try to swim faster, your form and stamina will fall apart. I guarantee it! If you can swim slowly and feel the "underwater glide", you've got it! When it happens, you'll know it and it feels really cool. You're like, "Am I coated in Vaseline? I'm just slipping through so easily and fast! Awesome!" It only happens when you swim smooth and SLOWLY.

Click on this link and watch this swimmer, Don Walsh; http://www.goswim.tv/vids/donwalsh.htmlNoticeseveralthingsabout him:

a. He has excellent balance.
b. He performs slow controlled movements.
c. His body is streamlined within a small tube.
d. He has good extension and maintains a long displacement body.
e. He seems to glide through the water faster than what you would think
based upon his stroke speed.
f. He is not the ‘skinniest’ looking guy in the world. You don’t have to
have sub 10% body fat to be a fast swimmer! Technique is more important
than thinness.

9. Swim forward, not up. Your swimming stroke is not meant to push yourself up and out of the water. It is meant to propel you forward. Keep saying to yourself "forward forward forward". Especially when your roll to breathe. The most common mistake by amateur swimmers (me not excluded) is that they convert their breathing stroke into a vertical support stroke to push their heads up and out of the water further. It doesn't work and it's wasted energy. It slows you down (dramatically) and creates bad habits. Keep that chin in tight to your shoulder and use that stroke to go FORWARD!

10. Aids and Tools:

My favorite is FistGloves: Swimming with your hand in a fist feels really strange! It forces you to have good balance because you can't use your hands to push yourself up out of the water. I usually do 5 warm-up laps with the gloves on and then take them off to do my training. Wow! It feels like someone has glued dinner plates to my hands! You'll feel like you're going as fast as a dolphin! I then do my 5 cool-down laps with the gloves on to make sure my body remembers proper balance in the water until the next swim.

Hip fins: These are fins on a belt that you wear around your waist. They do two things; they force you to roll. If you’re not rolling, your hands will hit them on each stroke. And they also provide some resistance during that roll and twist which will strengthen your core.

Pull buoy: This is the buoy that you hold between your knees to help keep your legs up. This helps to isolate your arm-stroke to work on perfecting it. While I find that a pull buoy is good for isolating the arms for correcting issues, I think swimming with a pull buoy too much can be bad because it gives you a false sense of balance.

Fins: The same with fins. They are good for helping to isolate the arms, but using them too much gives you a false sense of speed and balance. Use them until the issue is corrected and then stop.

Kick board: While a kickboard is a good tool for getting the feel of forward kicking power, I prefer to do “vertical kicking”. Go into the deep end of the pool, keep your arms around your chest and using only your legs, try to maintain a vertical position by kicking alone. This will quickly let you feel what is the optimum way to kick.

Speaking of kicking: While sprinters may use a strong kick, we are triathletes. Our goal is to get through the water as quickly as possible, while saving enough energy (especially in our legs) for the upcoming bike and run. I believe in a small kick which keeps the legs within that two-foot-tube that I wrote about earlier. Once your legs go outside that tube, they increase drag and slow you down. So your kick comes from your butt, not your knees. Try to keep your knees relatively straight and use your glutes, quads and hamstrings to do the kick. Don’t worry so much about a strong kick or the rhythm, it will naturally fall into place. Just concentrate on not bending your knees too much and keeping your ankles within 18 inches of each other. I have actually recommended that people tie their ankles together with an 18-24 inch piece of cloth to force their small kick.


Endurance: Why do I get so tired and can only do 2-4 lengths before stopping from exhaustion?

Everyone has an initial plateau from a mind-body connection when it comes to beginning exercise. Let me explain. When you begin running or biking, your muscles send a signal to your brain saying, "we need more oxygen and glucose fuel!" Your brain's first and foremost reaction is to want to conserve as much energy as possible and not burn it, so it says in your subconscious, "Then we should stop." But since most people have biked and run much more than they have swam, they can push that initial subconscious thought to the side and keep going. Also, while biking and running, we have a constant and endless supply of air to always breathe. After a few minutes the body establishes a working exercise rhythm, the brain & the subconscious accept it and you establish your "pace". I can bike at an average 21mph for six straight hours. I can run a 10-min/mile pace for three hours. I have trained my body and mind to break through that initial plateau and establish an efficient and do-able exercise pace.

The same thing happens when you swim. Except for two differences; You haven't been swimming as much and as regularly as you have biking and running. And you don't have that constant and endless supply of air. You need to pace your breathing and roll up to the air to get it. But that's just a function of form. You still have the same subconscious plateau to get over. And there's no other way to do it, other than to just do it.

Go to the lifeguard and tell him/her that you're going to do an endurance set of 15 laps (endurance for you that is) and to please keep a close eye on the lane you are in. Then SWIM 15 LAPS NON-STOP! Keep your pace slow and steady and remain as relaxed as possible. At some point in the first 3 laps, you will feel tired and begin to get nervous. That nervousness may even become anxiety or fear. Stay slow and steady and KEEP GOING! DON'T PANIC - YOU HAVE NO CHOICE! You have to keep going! You can not stop! It is not an option! The lifeguard is watching you and they won't let you drown. Just keep swimming. You're forcing your body to establish a swimming pace and teaching your subconscious to release the anxiety and fear.

You'll begin to notice something around the 6th to 10th lap. IT STARTS TO GET EASIER! Your heart rate will lower, you'll smooth out and the swimming will even begin to get boring. That's the goal! You may want to instead of counting laps, just keep mindlessly swimming for 15 minutes and glance at the clock every once in a while. Sing a song in your head. Think of something else other than swimming. Transport yourself to another place. Your body will adapt and your mind will relax and accept it. Lots of competitive swimmers here on BT often complain about doing endless, boring laps. They're constantly doing different drills to put some fun back into the training and they're the ones posting, "How do you keep track of your laps? After 50, I lose track."

These people have trained their bodies and minds to swim past that plateau and establish a swimming pace. And you can too! Force yourself through the mental plateau and then continue to add a lap or two a week. Start with something manageable, say, 5-10 laps and then work up. And you have to be in the pool at least 4 days out of the week. One or two hours a week isn't going to cut it. And hour a day Mon-Fri is a more realistic time goal to improving your comfort and swimming technique.


I hope you found this helpful.

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What a good post re:swimming tips. I for one really appreciate the suggestions and have noted them on my swimming cheat sheet.

Race report:
Route 66 International Distance Triathlon

I was a co-director for this event, which is the "big" local race that the club puts on. Great race, but man I was wiped out last night.

Great race Les

All the credit for the swim tips goes to BigFuzzyDoug. I just copied and pasted the pm he sent me.

He sent me another one going deeper into front quadrant swimming if anyone wants me to post that as well.

Didn't want to bore y'all

Please do. I need all the help I can get.

Dude you rock. I needed jammers for my boys for swim team and i just ordered them from Tyr and got two suits and two goggles for $54 shipped original total was $104.

Thanks a bunch.

Great job on your race Lee. Co direct and place highly as well. Nice to see your comments on what it would take to be competitive locally. Am sure it would be similar here.

Worst haircut of my life today. Went in to get a trim, came out looking like a Marine. Usually have thick wavy hair. Now all the hair on my head is an 1/8 of inch long. Oh well it grows fast.

Les you and your boy did really well in your race. Congrats.

Kinda hard to say.... a lot of it depends on what kind of pain it is. I'd give it a few days to see how it responds to ice, and keep the training easy. Maybe 2 run / 1 walk.

I was fairly fit when I started running - a regular at spin class, would do some semi-long charity/group rides, etc.... and running still took a long time to get used to the beating. I remember coming home and sticking my ankles in a bucket of ice water because they'd be so sore. I'm still regularly icing something or other all the time.

Also, for some people adding 10% a week is a little aggressive. You might try keeping the same distance/time for at least 3 weeks before adding more.

Dwayne - your running shoes - are they fitted for you by a running store/not too old? Talk to your running store people. Also, ice baths. Ice is great. Good luck.

Ok last night, for the first time, I knowlingly missed my training. But it was only becasue both of the pools I swim at were closed becasue of tornado's. I promise to try and not let it happen again. Oh and we are making it up today. Can anyone say "brick training" yea I love this stuff.

Tiny, most of us miss some of our scheduled training. Weather, kids getting sick, spouses saying take me out to supper tonight or you are sleeping on the couch.

You are doing the right thing. If you can make it up another day great. But one or two missed workouts are not going to wreck your race. Get in the key workouts, the long runs and rides.

The danger is missing one, two then ten workouts. That will set you back. But if you get back on the horse you will do fine.

That is why I try and never miss one. It is impossible to miss two workouts in a row if you never miss the first one.

We made it up yesterday ran around in the neighborhood taking the long way to the pool. It helps when 4 out of your 5 family members are training for triathlons.

My two sons who are 7 and 10 are doing a kids try so 15 min 1.5 mi runs are perfect for them.

My daughter rides in the stroller like the princess that she is convinced she was born to be. She is only 5 so she will have to wait until next year to do the kids tri's.

Awesome. Another reason why I wake up early to get the work done - hard to make excuses when everyone else is asleep!

I actually perfer to work out in the morning but not as much as I prefer to work out with my wife (accountability) so I make the sacrifice to work out when it is convinient for both of us.

Was very windy yesterday, but needed to do 30 min. bike and 30 min run/walk brick.  Did bike ride inside rv park where there was very little wind but quite a few corners and speed bumps.  stayed in middle ring.  Speed and distance was down a little but avg cadence was 89.  First time I,ve been that high with a good hr.  Is this a good range for cadence or should it be higher?  Run was fastest it's ever been on brick.

Great job Dwayne. Most folks recommend a cadence of 90 or so. And you were right there.

Plus dealing with speed bumps is a good way learn better balance.

When I ride with ElHeffe99, a fellow BT'er, we often hit bumps in the bike lane that fell like speed bumps. They are probably tree roots growing under the street. You don't always see the bump, but if you have been over speed bumps before, they don't throw your balance off and you don't fall, like you might have with out practice on speed bumps.

Plus one of my favorite tri's is at a high school, and when you leave transition, you have to through their parking lot which has several speed bumps. People that aren't used to them get bounced around, I just raise up out of the saddle a bit and let my knees absorb the bump and then back to pedaling.

Yep!